From the Mind of Meegs

Commuting is like camping.

Permit me to explain--as though you had a choice in the matter.

One of my favorite things about camping is the fact that you can carry, on your person, pretty much everything that you need to make it in life. Even if you don't do hardcore, backpacking-style camping (hey, we don't), it's just the act of packing up your car and then, through your own labor, turning the campsite into a perfectly self-sufficient operation. For our technology-addicted society, I think camping is like a codependent having a breakthrough. Imagine a codependent who finally realizes that she doesn't need to rely on another person for her happiness. She has everything she needs within herself. So with camping. You realize you don't need all the bells and whistles. You can hold within yourself everything you need to make it.

That's how commuting is. OK, you have to rely on trains and buses to get you where you need to go. But you learn to decipher train schedules. You use your two feet to get you here, there and everywhere. You don't need the crutch of a car to move you around.

Here's another way they're alike. My sister dislikes camping because she finds it dirty. Now, it's true that shower facilities are often iffy, and that you're a lot closer to the actual dirt. If you go into camping applying the same standard of cleanliness that you apply in your normal everyday life, then yes--camping will be a failure. But if you accept that a little dirt never killed anyone and you adjust your standards accordingly, then you can stay quite clean while camping.

I'm often asked how I can commute in this weather. First of all, I barely can. I've spent the last few weeks bitching and moaning with the best of 'em. But you survive by adjusting your standards. We mostly spend our lives traveling from one temperature-controlled building to another, moving between them via a temperature-controlled transportation device that we call a car. For most of human history, winter meant you were cold, and summer meant you were warm. Now we expect that, when the weather changes, we will remain immune to it.

If you expect to commute and retain the same level of temperature stability that you get by moving from house to car to work to car to store to car to home, then yes--you will be too cold or too hot. But if you accept that the change in seasons means a certain level of temperature variation, then you can adjust your standards accordingly.

And hey, if you make it through a Chicago winter without losing a finger, you might just call that a success.