Cars, buses, trains and me: A memoir

On a ride home on BART last week, I began to sweat. Since I'm a diabetic, my first presumption of every significant sweating episode is that I have low blood sugar – it's a common symptom.

I had tested my blood before I left my office in San Francisco. It was fine. But now I was sweating. Profusely.

And it got worse. I could feel perspiration trickling down my back. And my front. Fortunately, I was wearing a black shirt, so it wasn't obvious. But I wondered if other riders noticed and felt the anxiety that comes with worrying about your health.

We pulled into the North Concord station and I stood up. Then I heard another rider shout. "How about someone turns on the mother #%$*ing air conditioner?"

Ah, public transit.

I walked out of the car and felt like I walked into a refrigerator. A cool day that I later realized was 95 degrees.

How hot was it on my BART car? One-hundred-five degrees? Hotter?

Ah, public transit.

My split shift of a pair of two-month stints of commuting on public transportation ended July 1 when my company reopened our office in Walnut Creek.  It gave me back that most American of privileges – the right to drive my car 50 minutes each way to work, rather than taking public transit. For many of my co-workers,  some of whom rode BART for a decade, it was like getting out of prison. For me, it was more like the end of an experiment.

BART wasn't new. Mrs. Brad and I have long been clients, having taken it on every trip to the interior Bay Area since the 1990s. We take BART to every Giants game, Pier 39 visit and Christmas shopping excursion. We take BART to the airports. We take BART to Warriors games.

But I never used it as a commuter until last fall, when I started working in San Francisco – before a temporary move to Walnut Creek. For the first two months of heading to San Francisco, I caught the Solano Express bus from Suisun City to the El Cerrito del Norte BART station, where I transferred to ride BART into the city. At night, it was the reverse.

Then it ended for four months, when some of us were temporarily in Walnut Creek and blissfully drove our cars. Then we moved back to San Francisco while our office was renovated and I changed my commute-to-the-city plan. This time, I drove to the North Concord BART station, then rode into the city.

People who have commuted that way for years consider me a lightweight. The hardcore folks – who take the bus to BART – scoff at my softness. And they're right.

But as I leave the temporary public transit commute grind, I gained four important observations:

• BART is less crazy during commute hours. Mrs. Brad and I encounter strange situations – people shouting, aggressively asking for money, acting erratically – nearly every time we take BART to a game on a weekend. In more than 150 trips during commute hours, I had one such situation, and it wasn't bad. The busier it is, the less crazy it is.

• Hard-core public transportation commuters take the bus, too. I admire anyone who regularly gets to the bus stop at 6 a.m., rides 45 minutes and then scrambles into a BART station to ride some more; only to do the reverse in the evening. The fact that it was a semi-regular concurrence for people to shout out displeasure at a driver – as if they were unable to avoid expressing their thoughts – was understandable. They were passengers for hours. Every day.

• Public transportation really works. A train from North Concord stops in San Francisco 45 minute later. It's a miracle.

• Most importantly, despite the previous three points, I'm really grateful that I'll be driving my car to work. Because I'm an American.

Brad Stanhope is a former Daily Republic editor. Reach him at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.