Chevrolet. Che? Hev? Rol? No, no, no – wait. Evr? Ah, yes – VRO. It is a game I play – the goal is to find as many consonants in a row as possible. Alternatively, to find as many consecutive letters in the make of the car that sound like gibberish.
My commute has multiplied from a modest four miles one way to a hefty thirty, along which hundreds of cars accelerate, decelerate and keep pace. As I wait for the traffic to move along the on-ramp to 66 West, I watch the stop light blink from red to green in a matter of seconds. An infuriating test of patience and the ability to be cutthroat, the feed from the on-ramp merging into traffic looks like a zipper, the exceptions being the impatient ones eager to jump the gun and run the half-second that the green light is on.
East Falls Church. West Falls Church. 495.
I look down from the overpass. Relieved I don’t have to take 495 North to Tysons. Or really, even 495 at all. Dunn Loring. Vienna. How many Troopers are out today? The concerns of my commute have gone from how much juice my iPod has to how much gas I have left, from whether I’ll be stuck after just missing the train to how long I’ll be stuck behind the aftermath of an accident, and from whether the doors will close before I make the train to making sure I don’t clip my own car backing out of the parking garage. Fun fact: side mirrors are fragile and expensive to replace.
Chantilly. Centerville.
“GAINESVILLE: 12 MINUTES”the dated electronic road sign says above the road near Fair Lakes. The sign on this side of the interstate at this time of day is almost pointless: the average speed of any single vehicle traveling on the interstate on this side at this time is usually between 60-70 miles per hour. And at that rate, Manassas is an easy 10 minutes way, barring any accidents or bottlenecks. But that estimate is only taking into account the distance between 66 and the off-ramp, not the distance between the off-ramp and work.
Manassas.
Some of the roads have been recently paved, causing the sounds that the tires make running over it to differ drastically from the usual hum – little to no vibration but the sound starting at a low pitch and rising. At roughly 50 miles per hour, the sound takes nearly five seconds to reach the lowest pitch to the highest pitch before the cycle begins again. This discovery was initially met with fear and the notion that I was losing air in one of the tires until I realized what was going on. Still, bizarre.
Work.
It’s as if there is an imaginary tunnel between home and work, one that a little car travels through that looks enough like a spaceship in some ways to be one. And the only way to actually physically determine how extreme the weather is is by getting out of the car between the parking lot and the doorway to work. I get out of my weird, no-so-new, slightly dented little spaceship and make the 200 yard walk in to work, spotting the new freeze indicator sign outside the facility. It’s freezing. But only for the ten seconds I’m spending out here.
And the day begins.
