Post Punk Kitchen Forum

No kidding! This dude I work with always wants me and my boyfriend to come into town after work and hang out, but it's a one hour round trip. Which is nothing compared to your two hour situation, but still...we live close to work for a reason! And we can sit around drinking beer at home.

I don't really like driving either, and there are a million accidents all the time in my area and it freaks me out. I was in a bad accident with my sister years ago due to icy road conditions, so when it snows out here (because it never sticks and the roads are so slick) I ask that someone pick me up (which is easy to do because I'm on everyone of my coworkers' route).

I used to do about 2 hours each way door to door, but I knew going in that it was only for 1 year. I ended up making a really great friend there who lived close and used to sleep 1 night per week on their sofa, or 2 nights in bad weather. It cut out 2 journeys per week but meant I was still mostly at home in my own bed, which is important to me. They wouldn't take money so I'd get us all a takeout or something for that evening. It worked pretty well for all of us, really.

I had a 50mile, 1hr 20min commute a few years back, it just made for what was a super duper long day...however, 30miles if the commute was through Great Smoky Mtns National Park, so at least when it was daylight for the drive, it was a pretty commute.

The scenery is what kept me most sane, because I never got around to books on CD and my car can't play MP3s (never got a transmitter thingy). The worst was wanting to listen to NPR and driving through the 20minutes or so of park driving where no NPR channels came in (and when my car refused to switch out CDs- I listened to bird calls during that time). GUH! Only country channels are found anywhere. Still, most people don't get to drive through a National Park on their way to work.

It 'only' takes me thirty minutes to get from my door to work. But then once I'm at work I can be driving all over. Some days I do four hours of driving. I've found that a long drive tires me out. Last year I was considering a job that would require a drive of an hour from door to door, but I planned to rent a place nearby to save my sanity and gas and then I would return home on the weekend. Luckily, something better came along!

I don't know that audible.com would meet my needs because I would likely zone out....but I do subscribe to satelite radio and that helps a lot.