71–80 of 94 posts
I freelance from Upstate NY, my office is in my Basement. My clients are mostly in NYC and SF. My favorite commute was when I lived in SF and worked about a mile from the office. I used to ride my bike everyday, some how it felt like a downhill ride each way. Was a great way to get ready for the work day in the morning, and clear my mind on the way home.
The layout of the roads, design of on-ramps and off-ramps, and very common merging and unmerging of major high-speed freeways and slower highways with traffic lights, sometimes with multiple others happening within just a few hundred yards, causes a lot of poor driving habits to build up. Drivers in the state are very greedy about their position "in line" and will tailgate aggressively to prevent traffic from merging more gracefully. It infuriates drivers behind me that i always leave an adequate amount of space between my car and the one ahead of me, especially if an on-ramp is coming up to merge. The radio calls these "volume delays" but they are more accurately called "asshole delays."
1 hour of that commute is on the commuter train, during which I work for part of and read or watch shows during the other. It also means my in-office hours are 9:15 - 4:15 since I finish the rest of my work on the train.
I tried working at home for three years and hated it. Even though I consider myself to be more on the introverted side, I got quite lonely in an empty house all day, and find it much more exciting to be at an office.
For what it's worth I previously had a job where I drove an hour and 45 minutes twice a week and _hated_ that. I would never do this commute if I had to drive instead.
I live on Whidbey Island, in Puget Sound. 0 commute. My office looks out over Admiralty Inlet and the Olympic Mountains.
It's a 20-minute walk into our tiny town center, 4 minutes down to the beach.
I've been mostly telecommuting since 2008.
Once I worked in a company 20km away and had to drive 45min by bus through the countryside every day. It was especially bad in summer, when the bus was full and I had to stand the whole time between sweaty people. Then I arrived at one side of the city and had to "climb" to the top of the hill on the other side of the city.
Then I worked at a hospital, but it was in the woods outside of the city, so I had to get there by bus, took 20min, so a bit better than the last job. Not much walking involved, but the busses were often rather cramped.
Later I moved into a bigger city and worked in a smaller city that was about 20km outside, but since it was a metropolitan area, I didn't have to drive by bus, just 10min train. Also, not much walking. I could get to the office between 10 and 11, so I didn't end up in full rush-hour trains.
Now I do contract work from home. Every other month or so I travel to customers for meetings, but most of them we do via Skype. All my customers were ~3 train hours away from me, so it wasn't much of a problem.
I also worked as a paper boy for 2 years, where the work included the commute, worst time ever :D
however, a couple of years back i quit my palo also startup job, moved to berkeley, and got a job in the CS research department at UC Berkeley.
this means i live 1.5 miles from work, and on nice days i walk (35 minutes), or take the bus (about the same as walking).
i gotta tell ya: i do not miss driving to work every day at all. :)