Nothing to speak of as far as adventures are concerned, so here is a quick update on how commuting works out.
First commute from the office was rather a disaster. I stayed in the office quite late, then left without checking the schedule. Subway ride was a few minutes slower than expected, and when I got to the station, I realized that I had missed my train by a couple of minutes. And, I found myself in the single longest interval between two trains for the entire day – which meant spending almost half an hour waiting. The door-to-door commute came to 1:15, which works out to about 45 minutes if timed properly.
I should not be complaining, I guess. The trains from Penn Station to Matawan, NJ, run about once every 30 minutes during rush hour, and I learned how to time it quite quickly. These trains are actually more frequent – about 4 every hour – during rush hour, and then switch to 30-minute intervals…
Still, not a single seat available…
This morning I tried a slightly different route, which has an advantage of being almost half less expensive, but disadvantage of having less frequent trains – now missing a train is always a 30-minute wait. Door-to-door time: 45 minutes, of which probably 5 more minutes could be shaved off with luck. At this point, I think I might be sticking with this approach, but I’ll try both variations a couple of more times before coming to a decision…
… and I am not as much concerned with the no-available-seats situation anymore: One stop after I got on the train, there ceased to be any available standing spots, too…
[updated on Oct 5th] 45 minutes on the way home, again with a 5-minute buffer that was probably extraneous. 39 minutes on the way in this morning (same route as yesterday), and it appears to be the quickest I can do.