Commuting Sentences

There are moments when life is perfect. Even in Southern California.

One of them was at the edge of a sparkling day in February, when the rising sun lit up the snow on the distant San Gabriel Mountains. As I soared into crystalline air, voices from Puccini’s exhilarating opera “Turandot” rang in my ears.

It was perfect . . . until the overpass from the northbound Ontario Freeway curled around and plunged into the westbound San Bernardino Freeway. Brake lights. An ocean of brake lights.

The words of the chorus blasting from my radio suddenly seemed more apt in English: “We’re already digging a grave for you!” cried the crowd, relishing the prospect of our hero’s head on the block.

Back to earth. Another day on the road.

For most of 1998, I drove 250 miles five days a week between my home in Riverside and The Times’ offices in Ventura. The gory statistics: three hours in the morning, much of it in gridlock; two hours home, traveling after other commuters were snugly at home.

Thanks to kindly bosses who foresaw my self-destruction, I transferred to the Orange County offices in Costa Mesa one year ago. Now my commute is at least in the normal range of what we Southern Californians put up with: 90 miles a day, 2 1/2 hours a day, give or take.

It is my new commute that has taught me the most about how to understand the balancing act so many Southern Californians struggle to maintain.

Commuting forces us to live an artificial life in a metal capsule filled with the electronic babble of radio and books on tape. But, ironically, we do it in an effort to have a natural life in a world where work and home are so often far apart.

We want a nice house, good schools, a rewarding career for ourselves and our wives and husbands too. And when that career offers an opportunity many miles away, we don’t want to sacrifice all of those things to take it.

Too easily we forget that commuting brings its own sacrifices. One is the time we otherwise could spend at home with our families doing the small things that, in the end, add up to a life. Another is the sense of belonging to a community that comes only by both living and working there.

But, for now, like commuters in households across the Southland, I put up with it. Besides, I tell myself with all that opera on the radio, someday I’ll learn Italian.

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OLD COMMUTE

Riverside to Ventura

Distance: 250 miles round trip

Time: 5 hours

(3 hours westbound; 2 hours eastbound)

Cost: $10 in gas

*

NEW COMMUTE

Riverside to Costa Mesa

Distance: 90 miles round trip

Time: 2.5 hours

(1.5 hours westbound; 1 hour eastbound)

Cost: $6.85 ($3.60 in gas; $3.25 in tolls)