Multi-modal Transportation

On Tuesday, I didn't commute by car. The first half of the day was spent interfacing several modern forms of transportation.

My son and his wife were headed back to Germany and had made arrangements to ship their car, so we started the day heading down Texas-146 toward Galveston. Highway 146 follows the western edge of Galveston Bay, so we passed several port facilities and container terminals along the way, but for shipping personal vehicles, the nearest place was on Galveston Island, about a 50 mile drive from our house. We followed them down there, and he was escorted into the terminal, parking his car in line. It'll sit there a week or so and then be put onto a ship. I expected it would be crated, but they actually drive the cars right onto the ship. We had to wait outside the gate; when he returned he was interested in a couple of other cars waiting there, including a Dodge Viper and an old Mercedes Benz in immaculate condition. I suppose the Viper owner just wants to drive his supercar in Europe. According to the port employee, the Mercedes had been sold for a good sum of money to a museum in Switzerland; the man had tears in his eyes as he left the car there.

Yes, we can love our possessions: They have meaning to us, and we can be attached to them because of the joy they bring us. Is it any wonder that some like me actually enjoy our daily commute, especially on days like today, between Christmas and New Year's Day, when there are few other cars on the road to interfere with the process?

After an enjoyable breakfast at IHOP, we headed up Broadway, which turns into I-45, and aimed for Bush Intercontinental Airport north of Houston. This was about a 62 mile trip up 45, making the interchange to US-59, and then to Beltway 8 and JFK Blvd. I must be a nerd, but I have to admit that I enjoy dropping people off at the airport. As you approach you find the sign that directs you to your airline's terminal, then you wind your way around to the passenger drop-off area. There's something about the hand-off from automobile transportation to air transportation that makes me feel like the future has arrived. It took nearly an hour to travel from Galveston to the airport, and they would wait nearly 5-hours before their flight actually left, but then they were merely 9 hours away from Frankfurt, Germany on the other side of the Atlantic. (They won't see their car for a month!)

Yes, I'm still a kid in some ways, just fascinated by the ways we're able to do things today. I'm sure that the Wright Brothers, 106 years ago this month, and the builders of the DC-3 which first flew 75 years ago this month, all envisioned this future, but it's here, and it's still amazing.

Then I had to go home and "telecommute" the rest of the day.

Driving Blind

How quickly we become dependent! Because of construction, I've learned to depend on my GPS with realtime traffic. I've told you in the past how it has saved me time, and when used without good judgment, cost me time, but for the most part it has been a great tool to have.

My son and his wife flew in from Germany last night and planed to head out of town to visit some friends for a couple of days, so he asked if he could borrow the GPS, unless I felt like I needed it for traffic. Being no wimp, I handed it to him. I can do the commute on my own!

Actually, I haven't been using it on the way home from work lately because the eastbound construction has been completed and I don't ever have a problem in the afternoon. On the way in, it's often still useful, but I headed out blind this morning. There's less traffic now because of people being off of work during the holiday season, I reasoned, and I shouldn't have any need for traffic alerts.

I did get past downtown without a problem, just a short backup that I expected, but suddenly things came to a halt in an unusual spot. I had no GPS to warn me ahead of time, but I have that old standby, a pair of eyes! On the top of the overpass I could see that the backup stretched for miles ahead, so I made my way to the right across 5 lanes and exited at Heights Blvd. I did find surprise construction that prevented me from turning left on 11th Street, but it was easy to make a block, and the GPS wouldn't have known about that anyway.

This post may seem silly, and I felt a little silly when I mentally hesitated before giving him the unit this morning. The technological tools are nice, but the truth is that most of the time we don't need them. Still, if it were stolen, I'd buy another one.

Winter Blues

I did the "Sonic" thing again yesterday. We have a Post Office box in Mont Belvieu, so I try to go there after work a couple of times each week. Most days I go home right after work, or else meet my wife in Baytown for dinner if she's out of the house, but once in a while I'm going to have the evening to myself. She was running errands and rather than meet to eat, well, we didn't. My goal was to put up the Christmas tree.

At the Post Office, I found my January issues of Car and Driver and Cycle World. Usually, that's cause to spend the evening reading about my favorite subjects, but that would have caused me to fail to meet my goal. Christmas comes early at my house this year due to family members who have limited time, and it wouldn't do to not have the tree up by Monday when we pick my son and daughter-in-law up from the airport.

Outdoor decorations have to wait, and that brings up the thing I hate about this time of year. We don't have real "winter" in this part of the country, and we're so far south that it doesn't get dark that early in comparison with most of the country, but it's dark before 6:00, and that's too early for me. The westbound side of I-10 is construction free now, reducing my drive back to 45 minutes, but there's still no daylight to speak of when I get home. If there's a big drawback to the commute, it's winter time.

Daytime will start to last longer before you know it. I'm surprised every year when it starts to get dark early, but I'm equally surprised that it starts to feel better so quickly after the solstice. Maybe not so surprised this year, since I'm already anticipating it.

Although it still needs to be decorated, I got the tree up and lit, and the Abominable Snowman perched on top in his traditional place.