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EARLY TO
RISE: Mayo steps out of the van at his campus
stop.
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Saul Bromberger and
Sandra Hoover
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IT'S JUST AFTER 4 in
the afternoon, and I'm crammed into a seat in a 14-passenger
Ford van winding its way over the dusty hills outside
Fremont, Calif. The woman next to me has begun to snore
softly. Next to her, another woman has pulled a checkered
blanket around her neck. Loath to disturb anyone, Diane
Jenkins, who works in the machine shop at the Stanford
Linear Accelerator Center, leans forward from her seat
behind me and passes up a scribbled note: "Here's my two
cents -- I think this is crazy!!! I'd rather have a
life than a house. I'm moving back to San Jose in
January."
What's crazy -- and not just to Jenkins -- is the commute
she and a dozen others endure each day. The group, half of
whom are Stanford employees, rides in a vanpool that runs
daily from California's Central Valley to Palo Alto.
Round-trip from the van's first stop -- on Blue Gum Avenue
in Modesto -- to Stanford and back is about 180 miles and
takes 41 |
