And I thought driving to Lowell was a supercommute

My career in technology product marketing was split between companies in Cambridge, where I could commute via public transpo, and companies in the burbs. Where I - ugh - had to drive.

Commuting even to the near suburbs was a drag, especially to Burlington, where I worked on 128, where I got caught in the always-ugly Route 3 and Route 93 chokepoints. But pyschologically, commuting to Lexington (about 12 miles) and Burlington (roughly 18 miles) wasn't all that awful. Lexington? Piece of cake. Theoretically, I could have walked it. (Theoretically.)

But I also spent time further out. Andover (23 miles or so, for two-and-a-half miserable years). Lowell (30 miles or so, for two-and-a-half miserable years). 

These commutes were ghastly, and not just because of the drive. The truth was that, when I got to work, I was seldom happy to be there. Both were ghastly experiences, and how I lasted two-and-a-half years each at these companies now seems unfathomable to me. Although I did make good friends at both of these stops, which I guess is what made those tenures fathomable.)

When I commuted to Lowell, I had to get a dental guard, as I found that, as I neared the office, I started to grind my teeth in time to whatever was on the radio. 

And one night, when I was returning home from Andover, when I'd stayed a bit late and was heading out at 7:30 or so, I started driving the wrong way on the road that was going to put me on Route 93. Fortunately, there was no one coming my way, and I was able to course correct. I'm pretty sure this was a virtual teeth-grinding episode.

All of my suburban commutes were supposedly reverse one, going against the traffic that was heading into Boston. But while heading out to work was quasi-reverse, coming back into Boston was always a cluster. 

I pretty much learned every alternate route, every side trip, every back road. This may not have trimmed any time off the commute, but had the benefit that I was usually moving. As opposed to sitting in traffic on one main route waiting to merge into traffic on the next main route. 

But my commuting trials and tribulations were nothing compared to what Kaitlin Jorgenson goes through. Her commute is 544 miles, which is more than the combined mileage of all four of my suburban commuting stints.

For the past 12 months, Jorgenson has commuted by plane every other week to her job at the Scott J. Aveda Hair Salon in the Upper West Side neighborhood of New York City from her home in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Source: CNBC)

Jorgenson used to live in Brooklyn, but she moved to Charlotte to be with her BF after her landlord jumped her rent by $700 a month. Another compelling reason was that after the pandemic, she came to the realization that she "wanted to go somewhere [she] could be closer to nature and have more space...that didn't cost a fortune."

But after a long time in NYC, she'd forged a great career for herself and didn't want to have to start over, building a new client base. Not to mention that stylists in NYC make a lot more money than they do in Charlotte, NC.

For Jorgenson, commuting four-plus hours by plane twice a month was a much easier pill to swallow than spending more to rent the same 400-square-foot apartment she’d outgrown — and lose the clients she had spent a decade working with.

She was able to switch her schedule, which was only three days to begin with, to every other week. (She now works 12-hour days.) And fortunately, she has a friend with a spare room near her job that she rents. All in all, even with plane fare, etc., her expenses are $2,000 less per month than when she was living in Brooklyn. 

Jorgenson is a super-supercommuter, but there are a lot of folks out there with a daily commute of 90 minutes or more, and the numbers have grown since Covid-19, when:

Companies embraced flexible work models, and people fled major cities.

They may have fled the major cities, but that's where a lot of the jobs remain. So they spend a lot of time getting there and back.

“It isn’t a new concept, think about all the businessmen in suits who fly with a single briefcase for one-day meetings,” says Jorgenson. “I just think the younger generation is learning how to make supercommuting work for our lives and ambitions.”

And I had a hard-enough time un-supercommuting to Lowell and Andover.