Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Slugging

Even though I have lived in the DC area for almost six years, I finally feel like an official resident. I take the bus to the Metro everyday to get to work, which generally takes out 55 minutes door-to-door. Since I was attending the Pens-Caps game last night, I decided to drive to work. (After 8:00pm, my bus runs only every half-hour making for an extremely long commute home.) When I have driven to work in the past, it usually takes about an hour and twenty minutes since I-66 is HOV only in the morning. So yesterday, I went to my bus stop, rolled down my car window and asked if anyone wanted a ride. I had two takers, Jim and Julie. It was a bit of an awkward ride, but we made it through by talking about traffic, Metro, the weather and restaurants. My total drive to work ended up taking about 35 minutes.

While I’m sure that some of you outside of the DC area may be amazed that I picked up strangers, this is actually very common around here. There is a website dedicated to slug lines and slugging. I definitely don’t want to do this everyday, but it is nice to know that I have the option. Plus, I feel like I made it through a right of passage of living and working in Northern Virginia/DC.

2 comments:

Andy said...

I thought that proper slugging etiquette was that you didn't HAVE to make idle chit-chat. It's acceptable to drive in silence... or at least the driver sets the tone and decides whether to chat. Next time you don't have to say anything if you don't want to.

Sean said...

Being a first-timer in the whole slugging thing, I probably did not know the proper etiquette. I also was not the first person to start talking.