So how was your trip?

December 14, 2007 @ Financial Aid Podcast Daily Free Internet Radio On Demand from financialaidpodcast@gmail.com (Christopher S. Penn )

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I use Twitter as sort of a microblog, the stuff that you wouldn’t particularly think important enough to put into a full blog post. Occasionally, however, you can put together a great stream of Tweets (essentially 140 character text messages) that do tell a story. This is a story of trying to get home.

12:50 PM: Heavy, heavy snow in Quincy, MA. Departing the office shortly to beat the evening commute.
1:40 PM: So far on commute have not exceeded five miles per hour.
1:50 PM: At this speed i bet i can safely twitter with my toes.

A friend remarked that I should focus on driving safely. My response:

1:55 PM: at this speed the only danger is being snowed in place.
2:10 PM: I was right. I can twitter with toes at two miles per hour.
2:30 PM: At current speed i will be home in just five hours.

Another friend remarked that at least I drive a Toyota Prius, so I shouldn’t be using the engine too much at that speed.

2:35 PM: at this speed i could nap.

I got to wondering about the One Laptop Per Child project. The laptops - I have yet to receive mine - are supposed to be able to set up an autonomous meshed wireless network on their own.

3:15 PM: I would love to set up a mobile mesh network in heavy traffic. Olpc where are you
4:05 PM: Thirteen miles to go. Three more hours.

I was half joking, but the reality would not be far from the exaggeration. I also emailed the office to let them know I’d be working from home tomorrow.

4:45 PM: Snow plus nightfall. Need gasoline too.
5:30 PM: Seriously considering walking.
6:00 PM: Cannot see anything.
6:15 PM: Two miles left.
6:30 PM: home.

Some lessons learned:

1. Never leave the office early at the same time everyone else leaves early. Either leave REALLY early, don’t bother coming in that day, or stay and wait out the storm. The commute home wiped out close to 6 hours of this day.

2. Wipers are nearly useless in heavy snow, as they ice over quickly Instead, turn up the heat in the car to 80 degrees and let thermal transfer do the hard work for you.

3. RainX is good in the winter, too.

4. I got home almost entirely on back roads and through neighborhoods. Every major and minor thoroughfare was wiped out, jammed, so there was a lot of very creative driving using the GPS to navigate neighborhood after neighborhood. Metrowest Boston’s suburbs are amazingly well internetworked and you can get from point to point pretty easily. There are a few choke points - a bridge between Wellesley and Needham goes over a river and there aren’t any subsidiary roads, making for a tough workaround. I sat for an hour just at that point.

5. A fully charged cell phone and a full tank of gas make the trip bearable. Caught up on all my callbacks to various folks who I owed calls to and then some. Even had a couple of sessions of Call Chris with my friend and PodCamp co-founder Chris Brogan, and we had some fascinating discussions about the future of new media in a recession, as well as how traditional marketing and PR firms need to adapt in order to survive.

6. The iPod Touch’s touchscreen has no tactile feedback. When you’re not looking at it, it’s impossible to use. Today was a day when eyes on the road were imperative and nowhere else during the moving portion of the drive (the standing still portion meant doing whatever) and old school interfaces with real buttons make devices usable without needing to look at them.

After all was said and done we got close to a foot of snow in just 8 hours in Metrowest Boston. I’m setting up Student Loan Network West in my home office, getting all my gear laid out and ready for a productive day tomorrow, when my commute will be from upstairs to downstairs - and I’ll bet I’ll get more done than today, for sure.

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