It was a normal Tuesday, the kind that seemed to exist just to take up space on the calendar between Monday and the weekend. And then, as the story so often goes, it all went wrong the moment I stopped to take a vitamin.
7:03: I have two minutes until I need to leave for work. I open the back to door to leave, when I remember that I forgot to take my Vitamin D. I would just leave, but Vitamin D, for reasons no one understands, helps people like me with MS manage their symptoms. I should go ahead and take it, so I don't forget.
7:06: I crank up the car, one minute late. I drive to the subway station to take the train to work, and the parking garage fills up by about 7:30. It's about a 20-minute drive, and try to get there by 7:25, just to be safe. I should be parked by 7:26, so it should be fine.
7:23: I pull in to the seven-level garage. My commute to work involves a 15-minute drive to the subway station, a five-minute drive to top level of the parking garage, a 50-minute train ride into San Francisco, and then a 7-minute walk from the station to my office. The whole process takes about an hour and a half if all goes well.
Today it did not.
7:27: The garage is unnervingly full, but I see a handful of spaces left. I should be fine, but the cars in front of me are taking their sweet time pulling into open spots. Meanwhile, cars coming from the other direction are filling them fast.
7:28: There are two spots left. The car in front of me is taking one of them.
7:29: And a car coming from the other direction just took the other.
7:30: Crap. But there is no need to panic. This has happened before, and the next station is only about five minutes away. Its parking garage usually doesn't fill up until about 7:45. I drive over, trying to move quickly to beat all the other cars who will soon have the same idea.
7:41: This garage is full too. But there is another garage on the other side of the freeway.
7:47: The car two spots ahead of me takes the last spot in the third garage. I've never seen all three garages of these garages full before I arrived. I've only worked in San Francisco a few months, and I have no idea what the next option is.
7:49: There's a shopping center across the street from the train station. I see people parking there and walking over, but I also see signs everywhere saying that those who do so will be towed. I'm scared to try it, so I drive over to the next station.
7:59: This station doesn't have a garage, but instead a large maze-like parking lot featuring a lot of dead ends. Its a traffic nightmare as cars buzz through and turn around. There are no spots to be had and about 100 cars circling, whose drivers seem to be feeling as frazzled as I am.
8:00: The drive to San Francisco takes about 45 minutes on a weekend, but I've never driven to work on a weekday the morning because I know the traffic is awful. According to the news, cars usually spend half an hour just waiting in line at the toll booth to take the bridge over the bay. But today, I'm going to have to try it.
8:10: It occurs to me that I probably should have stopped to use the bathroom before I got back on the freeway. MS causes many people, myself included, to go to the bathroom frequently and urgently. All the Vitamin D in the world doesn't prevent that.
8:20: As I fight through stop-and-go traffic, I really hate myself for not going to the bathroom. This is not going to be a fun drive in, and I'm no longer talking about the traffic. But I really don't want to stop because I'm already going to be late.
8:30: I'm somewhere in Oakland. Traffic is crawling. My bladder is screaming. I want to die.
8:33: I'm just going to have to get off on the next exit.
8:35: I get off and discover the exit has absolutely no services. But at least I wasted five minutes figuring that out. There are no businesses around, so I consider just pulling over to the side of the road to do my business, but I picture a newspaper article titled, "Local Attorney Arrested for Peeing by Freeway," and I can't bring myself to do it.
8:40: The next exit is in a horrible part of town and has one extremely sketchy looking gas station. But if that station has a toilet, it will forever hold a special place in my heart.
8:41: There are lots of sketchy looking people just hanging out in front of the gas station at 8:41 on a Tuesday morning. I wonder what has to happen in one's life to arrive in that position. But mostly I wonder if there's a bathroom.
8:42: Success! Oh thank God. That was excruciating. And the bathroom was even slightly cleaner than the condition of the station would have suggested. I have a new love for this part of Oakland. Maybe I'll come back to this wonderful place in my spare time this weekend.
8:45: I don't need gas, but I had to buy something to use the facilities so I handed the cashier ten bucks for gas to get a restroom key. I fill up as quickly as I can. It's early but I'm in a bad part of town that I don't know very well, and there already seems to be a lot of activity around me.
8:46: As I replace the gas nozzle, hop in the car, and hurry to leave, the driver of another car pulls in front of me. He signals for me to roll down my window.
8:48: My heart races. Part of me wants to just accelerate and get out of dodge, but I fear that might escalate whatever is about to happen. I'm already in the driver's seat of cranked car, so I can still take off quickly if I need to. And while I don't relish the thought of talking to strangers waiving at me in a hard-luck area of any demographic composition, I also don't want to be the white guy who flees just because a twenty-something year old minority tries to talk to me.
8:49: I roll down my window, expecting to be asked if I have any spare gas money. My car is modest, but it's nicer than the others here, so I am probably a natural target.
8:49: "Excuse me," the young man says. "You left your gas cap open."
8:50: I thank him just a little too warmly, because I feel terrible about myself. I've never felt more like a privileged, prejudiced jerk.
9:00: I'm back on the freeway, and traffic is still crawling. I packed my chicken-guacamole sandwich two hours ago, and it's going to spoil by the time I get to the office. It's 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, and I've already today I've managed to ruin a perfectly good sandwich and prove myself a racist.
9:05: Sitting in traffic, I eat my sandwich and the yogurt I packed for lunch. Otherwise I just have to throw them away whenever I finally get to the office, which at this rate might not be until Friday.
9:20: I'm not even across Oakland yet. I pull up my traffic app to see what time I'll actually get to my office on the other side of the bay. It says 10:45.
9:25: I turn around to go back toward home.
9:35: Really, I do. A batch of parking spots at my train station are reserved for monthly pass holders (I've been on the waiting list to become one for over a year), but whatever spaces are not filled by 10 become open to the public. I can drive back to the station, and claim one of those spots if I get in right at 10. If I do, I can ride in and be at the office by 11, which is about the same time I'll get there if I continue to fight through this traffic.
9:45: Now I'm caught in traffic getting back to my station as well. I'm not going to make it by 10. I'm pretty sure this is what Hell must be.
9:48: I won't get back to my subway station by 10, but I can get to the station with the weird maze of dead ends by then. I noticed that station also had some monthly reserved spots that open at 10. I get there at 9:54, and I hover over a reserved spot until 9:58. There being no parking enforcement officer in sight, I walk to catch the train.
10:58: I finally get to the office, almost four hours after I left home. Along the way, I almost used the bathroom on myself, I was wrongly suspicious of a nice young man, and I had to eat lunch at 9:00 a.m. It's been quite a day already.
I'm exhausted and ready to turn around and go home, but technically I should stay late to make up for not arriving until late morning.
And the worst part is that I know I'll have to do it all again tomorrow.
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