I've come to prefer taking the train over any other mode of travel, and I love my bicycle as well as my saintly '94 Altima which I took for 10 years without dinging out too badly (and doing my damn share of drunk driving mind you.) I grew up on Rte 4. Povo Road and commuting as a child consisted of tearing through a quartermile rut of mud, stone, and two dogs trailing by just to get to your mailbox. From that, you'd spin out onto the improved road dropping little bits of gravel onto TVA graytop. Then it was over 4 miles of Cherokee bones and two creeks to get to C&R market where Robin (God bless her) would give me a carrot cake or moon pie pro bono.
Later as a teenager, I commuted to school in Athens, where the smart kids, pretty girls, and good drugs were. This usually involved a ferrying of minivans between me and the brothers Donegan and 30 minutes on I-75. Don't tell me I wasn't a little spoilt.
I liked St. Andrews and Bennington because I could walk to class. Through 3 feet of goddamn snow, tho. I ain't even trying to sound like your grandfather. I choose to learn at high altitudes which makes me a candidate for the European Graduate School. (Why are all the amazing schools on mountains? It's like Hogwarts, fer real.
I used to commute an hour from the ethnically diverse Northwest Chicago to the far Northwest Suburbs of Chicago to work at a public relations firm which chose to locate itself in the most drab and anonymous office space in total suburbia. The most harrowing commutes I ever took were through exhaust-clogged blizzards on the Dan Ryan Expressway--thank God for WBEZ. How's that for a waltz of reverse white flight, white collar poverty, and gas waste?
When I finally began to work AND live in Chicago, I was introduced to the CTA, the second-largest public transportation system in our country, yet woefully inadequate by a magnitude. I never understood how Brazil could one up the U.S. on public transportation. Despite her delays and breakneck whoop-te-doos, the El always delivered her packages on time.
Despite Europeans complaints of it, I find the MTA to be pretty much a world class means of transportation. It's safe, comfortable, and blessed with spectacles and entertainments various. Though I usually prefer to read. Most magnificent though is when she comes out of the tunnel and alights majestically on that spangled bridge and I view get to view Manhattan as an open book, that I really begin to appreciate the joys of a good train ride.