The Commute

Every morning I take this path to work. I am blessed because I live close to where I work. But blessed isn't quite right. It is by design that I live near where I work. The bike ride is, Google predicts, 2.7miles, but I round up to three. I can make it in 15 minute on average which puts my speed at roughly 12mi/hr. Impress? I know.


Notice the zig-zag theme, it persists.


Traveling through my neighborhood is quite easy. It may only be three streets long , but its ordered and safe even with high traffic in the mornings due to the high school. Every intersection is a four-way stop and half the streets are one-ways. Now, Google won't let me plan a car route by going the wrong way down a one way, but, in truth, I usually take Hearthstone to the light at Government Street rather than cross on my own.




The aforementioned high school, Baton Rouge Magnet High School, despite its magnetic pull, I avoid at all costs. The parents of the high school students may be worse than their teenage drivers.













Government Street is not friendly to pedestrians.

There's a light just past the high school on Eugene and another at Hearthstone leading through a parking lot and to Kenmore Street, the nearest street that leads to the outer fringes of the garden district.



Again, the zig-zag pattern emerges. Zigging off Government and quickly zagging past Eugene Street, which can also be hairy, I pass through my old stomping ground Rittner Street.










There's a sign in front of the quasi-cul-de-sac now that calls it Rittner Terrace, we just called it summer camp. It's a geographic anomaly and a planners nightmarish horror. In the shape of a semicircle, it awkwardly connect half a dozen other streets in the most inefficient way possible





It seems like an area where the bourgeois well-to-do people in the heart of the Garden District think of fondly, but don't exactly want want to admit to. It's somewhat of a bohemian ghetto, where people live on the street almost as much live on their living room floor.

It lets out onto the first major artery of my daily commute, Myrtle Street.




I pass right by my friend Marty's house. Hey Marty. He's not up at this hour anyway. I can put a good distance behind me on Myrtle. There are stops signs at every intersection, most of them 4-way, and Google maps puts this distance at near 1/2 of a mile, one sixth of my total trek.






This leads me to a popular thoroughfare any tiger fan could tell you about, Dalrymple Dr. There's a right decent bike trail following this road, which at this point is called Park. It's name changes to Dalrymple after the park on Park, the Park park. Following that road will lead straight into the heart of LSU campus, but that is a story for another blog.

Here at the bottom of the hill I am zooming, but immediately to my right there is my next turn, Washington Street, and a huge fucking hill. Now I don't want to bitch about my commute, especially when I made this decision consciously and of my own accord, but I hate this area. There is a nutso downhill past the Park park, which is fine, but then there is an immediate uphill, which is not fine, up Washington Street.



I don't understand the purpose of this hill and these juxtaposed altitudes. If the land were left flat it'd be so much nicer. I do know there seems to be development. At the bottom of the hill, immediately to my left is a golf course, further on an overpass under train tracks, further still the man-made LSU lakes, and, after the battle up Washington, the Interstate, I-10.





Immediately after the Interstate I get off Washington. The lanes are big enough, but not well kept. I dart off into Georgia Street through a quite neighborhood. The neighborhood I work in seems, as with most neighborhoods in Baton Rouge, cutoff. It is on the outskirts of LSU but it is completely isolated by campus, the lakes, and the Interstate that runs through the heart of it. Where the neighborhood meets the lakes, in some parts, is a nice park which acts more as a buffer zone. In other parts, it is as if the neighborhood has been cut off by a sharp guillotine, i.e. my uphill battle on Washington St. The boundaries are evident.

I pass through these neighborhoods every day and my path serves as the conduit to which all these places are connected. Driving in a car, it is easy to detach where you are with where the road is taking you. So often, without purpose, I find myself behind a wheel just going . Because it takes more energy not to go.

The endorphins kick in somewhere around this point and I am at work, albeit 5-10 minutes late. Although I was 5-10 minutes late even when I drove - I am not a punctual person. The path I drove is not so different from the path I bike now. Believe it or not, it takes the same amount of time either way. I attribute this to the numerous stop signs and lights throughout the neighborhoods. I will never complain about a 4-way stop sign again, so help me God.


And God Bless Google Maps: http://maps.google.com/


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