So, this was my weekend:
- Saturday: Drive to my parents’ with Kate and SteelyKid for Easter.
- Sunday: Drive back to Niskayuna with Kate, leaving SteelyKid with Grandma and Grandpa
- Monday: Teach my 9:15 class, then drive to Ithaca to give a physics colloquium at Cornell, then drive back to my parents’, arriving just in time for the NCAA title game (great game, bad result).
- Tuesday: Drive back to Niskayuna with SteelyKid, then go to a local mall for a couple hours so she wouldn’t feel understimulated after a few days of Grandparent Camp.
This was all intentional, by the way– it’s not like we forgot to put her in the car Sunday morning. Her day care was closed Monday and Tuesday, and since I was going to Ithaca anyway, it made sense to leave her in Whitney Point, which is where you get off the Interstate to go to Ithaca.
But it was thoroughly exhausting. It worked out to a hair under 144 miles per day, on average, and I am even more familiar with the landscape along I-88 than I was before (which is saying something, given the number of times I’ve driven from Williamstown to WP or vice versa). I’m seriously considering leaving early this afternoon to go take a nap.
Lent is, of course, over, and I will be resuming blog-reading, and posting here will pick up a bit. Not just now, though. Too tired, too much other stuff that needs doing first.
East Coast people and their short driving distances. 144 miles/day is what they call a reasonable daily commute out west.
You have my sympathy. I drive back to Fargo from Minneapolis every other weekend. If I leave on Friday and come back on Sunday, I average over 170 miles/day. It leaves me very fried.
Mu: It depends very strongly on what sorts of roads you are driving on. Middle-of-nowhere interstates is one thing. Surface routes (Chad had to do some of that to get to Ithaca) and urban traffic (such as most commuters face) are another matter. 144 miles is a bit further than a roundtrip from my location to Boston. I can deal with it once in a while, but I would not wish such a daily commute on my worst enemy. I know that some people on both coasts do such commutes in the name of affordable housing, but I still consider it insane.