Commuting to / from work has always, while living in the outskirts of Dublin, been one of the daily challenges.  How long would I be spending in the car or on public transportation.

In fact, it’s a journey that I could never really tell whether it was going to take 45 mins or 77 minutes.  It really depended on what time I left the house or what time I left the office.  Calculating the commute was like putting your finger into a puddle and determining the temperature of the weather tomorrow – yes, pretty impossible.

As I got older and somewhat wiser, depending who you asked, I quickly realised that going from A to B was eating into my time I could play or be with my family.  I had to find a more time efficient method of commuting, and since the flux capacitor or the teleporting wasn’t ready available, then I had to look at alternatives.

The alternative was a super-cool silver aerodynamic Vespa Scooter (125cc) – not a chopper as I probably wanted, but it was nevertheless an animal of the road.  “Easy Rider” just became my new favourite movie.

For a number of years, I commuted to / from work in about 25 minutes.  I had thereby regained or reclaimed 1-1.5 hours of my life, which I could spend with my family … and I was even looking cool doing it!

When moving the to the US, I was contemplating to engaging the commuting work force, listing to “Travelling Wilburys“on the car stereo.  The question, among many, was which type of vehicle I would be stuck in AND for how long.

A huge percentage of the American work force have no problem spending anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours each way, which in my World is way too much.  But, if the house we wanted forced me to commute, so be it.

• I got my ride sorted; El Camino ’82, V8 … travelling in style!
• We got a wonderful house … a place for the family to relax

It was time to clock the time it would take to work.  I kickstarted the El Camino (said with a slight Mexican accent) and slammed the gear stick into “D”.  Yes! Full automatic.

From the time I started the Beast to the time I turned it off in front of the office, I had spent a whopping 11 minutes.  I live so close to work that the car doesn’t even get warm and the heating system doesn’t get time to defog or defrost the windshield.

However, the El Camino does manage to burn about a gallon of petrol on that distance.  Somehow I don’t think the local tree-huggers and Greenpeace activists are too impressed with that.

I had managed to move to an optimal location, which firstly fulfilled my family’s needs and, equally important, fulfilled my desire for a short commute.

How long is your commute?