Another Commute Comparison

Four weeks down and this ridiculous commute is getting easier every day. I guess that’s the great thing about routines.

I’ve traveled 682 kilometers — 424 miles — every weekday for a month. That’s 13,640 kilometers — 8,475.5 miles — in four weeks.

The earth’s circumference is about 24,900 miles at the equator (a little less around the poles) so I will circumnavigate the globe by train every 11-and-a-half weeks. I can’t even begin to process that right now.

Anyway, since the daily distance comparisons I made in my first commute blog aren’t so reasonable because they follow interstate highways and many of those U.S. routes don’t even have train service, I think I finally found a comparison that will put this grind in better perspective.

One of Amtrak’s longest passenger routes, the California Zephyr, winds 2,438 miles from Emeryville, California through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa en route to Chicago, Illinois.



Since I commute around 2,120 miles every week, in my first four weeks I’ve covered almost the same distance on rails as the California Zephyr does from Reno to Chicago, back to Reno, back to Chicago, and back to Reno again. Two roundtrips.




At least my Swedish train journeys are much faster than an Amtrak would take to cover the same distance.

Next time I blog, I’ll explain why.