Commuter Shoes: The End of an Era

Friday was my last day as a Metra commuter. When I bought my house, I drew a one mile radius from the three Elgin train stations. My goal was to live within a mile - easy walking distance - of a train to ease my commute downtown as much as possible.

After living in Chicago for seven years, moving to the farthest reach of the suburbs was a shock to the system. My commute grew to an average of about 80 minutes - ten minute walk from the house to the train, 60 minutes on the express train, and about a ten minute walk to the office downtown. Another 25 minutes could easily be tacked on if I deigned to work late or go out after work, stranding me on a non-express train, watching the freight trains breeze past.

I learned a lot from my train commuter days, though. The train becomes almost like family, in a way, with the same characters sitting in the same seats five days a week. You learn the rhythms of the train, the cadence of the conductors and what it means when you slow down through Franklin Park. In November, you pass the Ringling Brothers' circus train, nearly a mile long, parked just west of the city. In the dead of dark winter evenings, the strategically set fires light the night like fireworks, keeping the switches from freezing. Passing just south of O'Hare, there's a steady stream of planes landing and taking off - you can see them queued up for miles off toward the horizon.

You learn that if you typically finish the main news section of the Chicago Tribune around Itasca, though on Mondays and Tuesday, it may be as soon as Schaumburg. By Friday, when the paper is larger, the Elgin Courier may not get read until the train ride home. Occasionally there would be entire weeks where nothing sounded appealing, so I'd do the crossword puzzle and Sudoku from the morning papers. If I had work to do - especially editing - I'd tackle it on the way home, since working on an express train was preferable to staying late at the office and then taking a slower milk train home.

At first, entertaining yourself for the commute is almost fun. Finally, a chance to read, uninterrupted, every single weekday! I got into the very comfortable routine of bringing coffee and reading both newspapers in the morning. In the evenings, I would usually read for pleasure, either a novel or magazine (National Review or Verbatim). Over time, though, I would grow antsy with the sheer length of the commute, especially when nice weather beckoned. In winter, it didn't seem to bother me as much, since regardless of when I got home, it was cold, dark and miserable. In summer, though, with beautiful sunshine rapidly diminishing, I couldn't wait to get home, and the train would seem to creep through suburb after suburb.

Overall, I like Metra. It's clean, safe, relatively quiet and usually on time. Since I live out in the boondocks, I always got a seat in the morning, often on the upper deck where I could sit in a single seat and spread out with my newspapers. Coming home, especially lately since gas prices have been rocketing up, it's been increasingly difficult to get a seat, but leaving work five minutes earlier helped.

Plus, my years commuting fueled my first (and thus far only) novel, Commuter Shoes. It was written for National Novel Writing Month in 2006 and comprises a series of vignettes about fictionalized characters I saw on my daily commute. The title comes from my observation that suburban women who commute to the city often have a pair or two of commuter shoes that they reserve for the trip, carrying dress shoes with them or having a stockpile at the office to change into. Commuter shoes are often tennis shoes or the newish athliesure shoes, allowing comfortable walking and the occasional sprint to the train. I recently had a whopping eleven pairs of shoes under my desk at work.

But over time, I was nagged by a voice in my head, whining, "Are we there yet?" I never really slept on the train, always afraid I'd sleep past my stop. But I'd stare out the window in bored exhaustion from my day, anxious to just be home.

As I hunted for a new job, I pondered whether I wanted to stay downtown and remain a Metra girl, or if I wanted to be driving distance. I ended up finding one in Schaumburg, about a 35 minute drive from home. I accepted the offer, hoping that the drive wouldn't hurt. There appear to be a different possibilities for routing myself that I'll have to explore and time. Even though it will likely be relatively heavy traffic - as it was the morning I interviewed and clocked the drive at 35 minutes - I'll still be home sooner in the evening and leave later in the morning. And that's appealing to me. I envision going to more City Council meetings, finally joining the book club at the library I've eyed for the last year and doing more with my evenings without having to dash out of work early or plan ahead and work from home.

I would commute on Metra again, but maybe not from the far reaches of a line. If I could afford to live closer to Chicago and could buy a place near one of the closer stations - say no farther than zone D (vs H, as Elgin is), that might be okay. But for now, I hope I've made the right choice.

We shall see. The driving era begins Monday.

Mower Wars: The Finale

After months and months of frustration with my reel mower, I finally caved and bought a real mower. Mind you, I didn't go the full-fledged gas guzzling route. Rather, I went with my alterna-yuppie tendencies and bought an electric mower. My yard is small enough that even the far edges are reachable with a 100 foot extension cord. Plus, an electric engine is far more environmentally friendly and doesn't entail the sparkplugs, flooding threat and other hassles of a more traditional gas mower.

I started my research a couple weeks ago with a stop at Lowes. I had nearly made up my mind that I wanted to go the electric route, but I wanted to actually see an example. While there, I snagged a brochure, jotted my notes and weighed the relative merits of each. The kindly Lowes employee - an older gentleman - came by to offer his sage advice: "Women usually prefer the self-propelled. They're less work." Now, there would have been plenty of other ways to suggest that upsell without inserting the gender aspect. He could have mentioned a number of features that may merit the higher cost. Instead, when I explained that I was interested in an electric and asked for the difference between the two models on display, he tried again: "You know, electric means you have to mess with a cord. You should really consider a self-propelled." I smiled, thanked him and walked out.

Later that week, I again mowed with my reel mower. Even after cross-cutting the lawn, it was still uneven and looked ragged. Over the next ten days, it grew and grew and grew as unrelenting rain prevented me from cutting. So Saturday morning, I set off to (a different) Lowes and its neighboring Home Depot, notepad in hand, and compared the scarce few models available at each. I came home and discovered that my leading front runner was $30 cheaper on Amazon, with no sales tax and free shipping! Nearly ready to Add to Cart, I stopped by Menards while I was out running other errands. Success! They had a very comparable model on sale for even less money. I snagged it and brought it home.

Sunday morning, I donned my grubby yard clothes, did the small amount of necessary assembly and sat down to unravel the extension cord. With it sufficiently untangled, I ran into the screened porch to plug it in. Suddenly, for the eleventh day in a row, the skies opened. Within the next two minutes, as I frantically pulled everything back to the garage, thunder rumbled and lightning brought torrents of hail. I sighed and went about my day. By the time I got home from a Cougars game, the sun had been out long enough to make things nice and steamy, while drying out the lawn. I mowed my lawn with the words of reviewers in my head. It did look like I was vacuuming my lawn! But in a relatively quick span, the lawn was nice and even and looked better than it has since I've lived in this house.

I'm sad to give up my defiant reel mower. But the resulting lush suburban grass makes it worth it.

And besides, I can keep using the reel mower on the slower-growing, shaded backyard - just to keep it real.

Easy Electric

I bought my timer switch last weekend, read the directions, and realized that it may be a better daylight project since it entailed cutting power to the circuit with the hall light.

Finally, I got around to it today. I cut power - thanks to some previous owners for meticulously labeling the breaker box with "Living room - South Wall" type detail - and tested my switch to make sure it was good and dead.

I pulled off the faceplate - there are three switches right there - and evaluated the situation. The switch had obviously been there since the Carter administration (at least), as it took some prying to expose the poof balls of black schmutz and insulation. The switch wasn't grounded at all. After a minute of gentle tugging, I realized wire snips were the easiest way to cut the old wire from the switch - after I triple-checked that the power was indeed off.

One of the joys of an old house is the old wiring. While the breaker box has been updated, some of the internal wiring is, well, old (and I have some old, retired outlets to prove it!). The wires in the wall are wrapped in black cloth. I used my wire snips again to gently peel back about half an inch of insulation so I could fit the wire into the caps with the new switch wires. I lined up the wires, made my connections, grounded the thing (an improvement already!) and then struggled to get all the new wires back into the hole. I kept at it until the (much whiter) new timer switch was nearly flush with its old, almond neighbors. Then it dawned on me that before I finished the arduous tightening, I should probably turn the power on and make sure that everything was connected right. Success!

In many ways, the hardest part of the whole project was getting the faceplate back in place and lined up. It's still not quite perfectly flush, since the new switch is a tad larger than the old ones, but it gets the job done. I set the program - lights on at sunset, off at 2 AM - and we're good to go.

It was my very first solo electric project - hooray!