Like her listeners, Lisa Baden has her own commute to handle. Every weekday she drives 43 miles each way from the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay to her office in Silver Spring.
And she does it in the dark. With two alarms and a light timed to shine on her bed, she wakes up at what she calls “o’dark thirty.” She hops into her Mini Cooper — without makeup but with rollers in her hair — no later than 3:50 a.m. to share the road with bread deliverymen, construction workers and the occasional late-night partier.
“You have to be on your toes for a lot of sleepy people, a lot of inebriated people and a lot of deer,” she said.
She plans so she doesn’t need to stop for gas. She keeps her car maintained and her cell phone charged. If snow is forecast, she spends the night in a hotel close to the office.
Once at work, Baden barely has time to go to the bathroom. When she gets up from her desk, she brings along a small digital clock that she sets each day to the Naval Observatory master clock.
“It takes about two hours to eat a bowl of cereal,” she said.
She is done for the day at 11 a.m.
Then it’s back on the road so she can get to the round house that sits atop a hill on 2 acres overlooking the Bay.
“It’s worth the drive,” she said. “It’s quiet. It’s funny I like quiet.”
There, she enjoys early evenings with her husband, Tom Murphy, and Skipper the Wonder Dog, their small white Coton de Tulear.
Then it’s to bed early so she can be up again for another day of traffic.
— Kytja Weir
