Santa Cruz to Redwood City and Back... Five Days a Week!

For the summer of 2019, I accepted a software engineering internship at NCR, a company you are probably familiar with if you’ve used an ATM or a self checkout line at the grocery store. In this case, though, I’d be working on mobile banking software. I was an undergrad at the University of California at Santa Cruz studying Computer Science and was excited for my first real opportunity in the tech industry.

The problem? I lived in Santa Cruz and the office I’d be working at was in Redwood City (~50 miles in heavy traffic). Hybrid? Work from home? No, this was right before the pandemic and I was to be in office five days a week.

Logical separation

While I did have some apprehension about the commute, there was no way I was going to give up the opportunity just because of a long drive. At that time, I had a 2006 Chevy Silverado Crew Cab with the 5.3 liter V8. I began planning how to make the commute a little more digestible and perhaps more affordable (big thirsty V8 after all). I landed on a mix of three distinct phases.

I would drive my truck south on Highway 17 down the mountain from Santa Cruz and park at the San Jose Diridon train station. There, I would hop on the Caltrain heading north through the heart of Silicon Valley. Eventually, I would get off at the Redwood City stop. From the train station to the office is about another 3 miles, so a bit long for a morning walk to the office. Thankfully, my trusty Segway ES1 electric scooter would crush this ride morning and afternoon, day in and day out for the whole summer. Repeat in reverse when the work day ended.

Change the outlook

To be honest, I actually really enjoyed the train and scooter aspects of this commute. It was such a nice way to start the morning and break up what would be an awful drive in heavy traffic. I would scooter along this really interesting bike path that would take me all the way out to the office complex right on the water; it always had a bit of a surreal feeling to it.

I was still pretty new to the “real world”, being a college kid and only living out of my parents house for about a year or so. All of a sudden, I was working in the tech world with a real office commute (at a beautiful Google owned office complex, no less). For some reason, the vessels used only added to the magic.