Friday, July 18, 2008

Commute from Hell

I cover a lot of miles in my daily commuting. 160 miles a day on those days when I have to actually go into the office. Due to the distance, I take semi-public transportation - I'm in a vanpool. A company owns the vans and we do the driving. The vans are not new, which is an understatement. They all seem to have close to or over 200,000 miles on them. They look good, but they do have some mileage on them. As with any vehicle sooner or later they will betray you and yesterday on the way home was that day. And it's not the first time. Apparently the alternator gave out and shortly thereafter so did the battery. All the gauges went first and then the transmission cease to function. We literally coasted down a small hill for about 1/2 mile and made it to a gas station. Albeit one with a convenience store and not a true service station. Time - 5:00PM. The company that owns the van is located in Fredericksburg. We were stuck in Waldorf, MD. For those not familiar with the local geography, we were on one side of the Potomac River and the van company is on the other. A good 70 miles away during rush hour and only two bridges to choose from. We were screwed any way you looked at it. It took the van company until 7:50PM to show up with a replacement van. Almost 3 hours. Suckers. Did I mention that the temperature was 96 degrees? Double suck. Needless to say I missed my practice and the Happy Hour the club was having after practice. Triple suck. And the convenience store didn't sell beer either. Stupid Maryland.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hi Frank,

I'm sorry to learn that your vanpool broke down. VPSI, Inc., the nation's largest vanpool services provider with a fleet of 5000 vehicles in operation, provides vehicles for four years or 100,000 miles. In Virginia, we have offices in both Springfield and Richmond to take care of our groups. Please feel free to call me at (804) 740-3010 to learn about our program.

Kind regards, Mike Norvell, VPSI