When we first moved to Utah I was working in Provo. There is no good public transit from out house to Provo. Because of that we chose to purchase a Prius since it is about a 30 mile commute each way. That worked out fine. As long as I left before 7:00 AM there was very little traffic and I got to work when the office was still nice and quiet. But then some things changed and now I am working out of the Salt Lake City office. Getting to downtown Salt Lake City turns out to be a rather easy on public transit, but it can be a bit of an adventure.
The commute itself is quite easy. I have about a 20 minute walk to the light rail station. Then I ride the train for about 30 minutes. The train station in downtown SLC is across from the building my work is in. The only way it could be closer is if the station was in the lobby. So this part is all good, until I realized one slight oversight in our research on Utah.
Before we moved we did a lot of research. Well as much as you can in a couple weeks. Given it was about two week from the day we said we would consider a job outside of Seattle and when we were driving out here for me to start my new job. Part of that research was about the climate. We learned that Salt Lake City and the rest of the metropolitan area that surrounds it is in a high desert. From what we read it sounded like the area had a bit bigger range than the Puget Sound does. But it turns out it is a bit bigger than we thought.
Our research showed that the summers were in the high 90’s to low 100’s. That is accurate to what we experienced this past summer. But our winter research wasn’t so accurate. We were expecting low 30’s maybe hight 20’s at extreme times. The reality is a tad lower. This past week most days never got above freezing and the night got down to the single digits several times.
Back to my commute to work. That 20 minute walk to the light rail station isn’t quite a walk in the park. On my first day of my new commute it was six degrees outside. Because of that I really bundled up. I felt like an astronaut or a mummy I had so many layers on. Even with all those layers by the time I got to the station I felt like I had icicles forming on my nose. Just getting my gloves off enough to get my train pass out was a very chilly experience.
But I managed. Getting onto the light rail was a bit awkward, because all of those layers made it hard to move. Fortunately there were plenty of places to sit down. That was good because the first thing I wanted to do was get all of those extra layers off, and relax a bit. The trip into the city was fine. Like all light rails there were a lot of stops and a some jerking as the train made it’s way down the line.
I finally got to work, and quickly walked across the street to be inside my warm building. The day went very well and the SLC office is quite nice. By the end of my day the sun was shining and it looked nice out. I checked and it was now 26 degrees. Wow that was a 20 degree increase over the morning. As I got around to head home I decided to stuff some of my ‘extra’ layers into my backpack. It looked so nice out I didn’t figure I would need them for the 10 minute wait I might have for the train.
As I walked out the door of my building I was immediately greeted with the reality that my thinking might have been a bit off. I waited and waited and waited for the train. It was on time but when you are busy growing icicles 10 minutes seems like a very long time. As I got into the train I realized that not everything is relative. Six degrees below freezing is still quite cold.