First working day after moving to the mainland

Just before logging off on Sunday night, I set my alarm to wake me up by 4:30 so I would be on the road to work, latest by 5.15 Monday morning. I had recently moved from Lekki to Yaba (UNILAG area) and with my workplace in VI, I wanted to make sure the increase in my daily commute would not be so high as to be murderous. So, the simple solution was for me was to leave early enough to avoid the rush-hour traffic.

Alas, I woke up just a few minutes to six on Monday to a phone call. Either I had not set the alarm correctly or my body just decided to ignore it anyway. Fortunately, there was an issue early in the morning at work for which my attention was needed. Only God knows what time I would have woken up if my colleague Cyril had not called me when he did. I scrambled to get ready quicker than I usually would and in about thirty minutes, I hit the road. Trust me, thirty minutes is impressive when it comes to me getting ready.

Thankfully, I parked my car at a good spot in the compound i.e. one where no other car was blocking my way out. I got on the road at 6:30 and there was little congestion on the road up till the point of the Third mainland bridge (3MB) where traffic coming through Adekunle merges with traffic coming through Oworonshoki. As I pressed on the breaks, nostalgia of my days in my last job when I had to wade through this traffic every single day washed over me. Now I think nostalgia is not the right word to use here, because, for me, there's nothing desirable about driving through slow-moving traffic. I was shocked to realize that the last time I was in this traffic was well over a year ago. You don't know what you have until you lose it.

It took me 1 hour and 10 minutes to get to work that morning. On weekends when there are no congestions, the drive to work from my new place at Yaba is at most, twenty minutes. So travel time triples in morning rush-hour on 3MB. Who knows what the multiplier might have been, had I left home at 7?

I made up my mind that morning that this was not going to be the norm. I was gonna be an early riser to avoid wasting time driving mindlessly through traffic; time that could be invested elsewhere. After all, when I lived in Lekki, I spent an average of only 17 minutes commuting to work in the morning. True to my word, that first morning was the last time I ever got caught up in rush-hour congestion on the way to work.

Over time, I've also discovered that 8:30pm is the ideal time in the evening to leave from Victoria Island to Yaba in Lagos on a regular weekday. At that time, the 3MB route from V.I. to Yaba is more or less as congestion-free as it usually is (in the opposite direction) between 5 and 6 in the morning. Happy commuting through the madness of Lagos.