The Long-Distance Oner

If I were a golfer, this would be about one kind of drive, but I'm not, so it isn't.

In May, 2000, I started work at Excite@Home, which had its sprawling headquarters in a series of tinted-glass buildings just off of U.S. 101, in Redwood City, the heart of Silicon Valley.

At that moment, I became a commuter. Twenty-nine years after moving to San Francisco, for the first time, I needed to buy a decent car able to withstand the rigors of bouncing along one of the busiest stretches of highway in the country.

Mornings were one type of commute, evenings another type altogether. Mornings feel like you and your car are being swallowed into a giant vortex with thousands of other people in their cars, spun around and then whipped out onto the open road in great clumps of confusion.

You may find yourself on the far right lane of five, which would be okay except that lane will be splitting off in another direction very soon, so you must start frantically speeding up, signaling, glancing over your shoulder at the onrushing cars, many of which have ben dumped out of the vortex into the far left lane, and need to get over to the far right to make their exit.

From above, it appears as chaos to the helicopters ready to relay traffic reports to the radio stations all of us are tuned into in order to determine which route will be the speediest (i.e., less-slow) way to get to work.

At ground level, assuming you've survived this frenetic entry into the morning commute, your racing heart may fitfully slow into merely a life-threatening arrhythmia as you contemplate the multiple dangers confronting you in all directions. There's a madman in a black hummer racing toward your rear, and you wish you had a machine gun mounted back there so you could take him out before he flattens you in his hell-bent mission to prove his manhood through violence against the innocent.

There's the equally hazardous woman speeding past on her cellphone, laughing and talking while her sports car weaves between the lane markers, threatening widespread mayhem as everybody else strains to avoid being sideswiped by her.

Massive trucks thunder past, their unstable retreads one of the main weapons that may kill you if you happen to linger in the lane next to them a second too long. (Don't.) It's all a blur of motion, so it's a while before you notice that the smoky haze is so thick from a thousand forest fires here in Northern California this week combined with the toxic emissions from all these vehicles make your lungs hurt, as if you're becoming asthmatic on the spot.

The traffic report says there a motorcycle down in the north bay and a jack-knifed big rig in the south. A stall slowing traffic over the Bay Bridge, and something that looks like a pile of spaghetti in the second lane from the left on the Dumbarton. A car's hit a deer out in Solano, and rubber-neckers are slowing to eyeball a fender-bender in Brisbane.

Where the hell is Brisbane? A naked person is reported to be strolling along Highway 17, while a truck may or may not be on fire just this side of the Caldecott Tunnel. There's a bale of hay blowing down the freeway at...

Back up! Naked person, where? Nice looking? Female? Which side of which road?

Distraction is your enemy. Concentrate. hands gripped on the wheel, eyes straight ahead, buttocks well-clenched. Do not relax even if it's the lovely Kelly Hu strolling nude down the highway! And, then you see it:

The smoke has reduced the sun to a dull moon, small and dark in the eastern sky. No need even for sunglasses. That is what it is like to load yourself into your racing metal/plastic can down U.S. 101, Monday through Friday, to the richest valley on earth, circa 2008.

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