My love letter to Bay Area public transit

Last Tuesday, I assumed my regular position during my commute to work: BART car number three, window seat in the last row before the standing area. That day, the chairs are plasticky and the train floor is covered with sopping wet umbrellas from a particularly rainy Berkeley morning.

I notice a young girl in a yellow coat rest her head on her mother’s arm, who is wearing scrubs and holding her daughter’s stuffed bear for safekeeping. To my right, a man in a suit is nose deep in Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.”

I arrive at the 16th Street Mission station and shuffle off the train, heading upstairs to catch the 22 bus line to work. The line is a few minutes late, but I don’t mind the wait. I take out my earbuds to listen to the bus driver catch up with a passenger about the morning rush — he is a regular, it seems.

By the time I get to work, I have spent more than an hour and a half on public transportation. Yet for some reason I can’t shake the feeling that the next best part of my day will be the commute home.