It is very, very dark in and around greater Cincinnati at 5:45 a.m. It is dark, and it is cold, and neither of those realities ever discourages Mark Justin.
“If you get to Indianapolis at the wrong time,” he says, his breath steaming through the morning air, “it can take you an hour to get around it.”
So, with the sun a rumor and a stranger by his side, he was off.
Mark Justin is director of retail marketing for SureBeam Corp., which provides electron-beam systems (that is, irradiation systems) to the food industry. His office is in Glendale Heights, a suburb northwest of Chicago. His home is in Tylersville, Ohio, a suburb north of Cincinnati.
He commutes to work between Tylersville and Glendale Heights in his tan van. He’s in Glendale Heights most weeks, home most weekends.
Driving distance from home to office: 350 miles.
“For me, to fly to Chicago takes just as long as to drive it,” he says, easing the GMC Savana down the driveway of his home. “And I know if I’m driving, there’s not going to be airport delays and security breaches.
“I know if I drive, I can be there in 5 hours 20 minutes, 5 hours 30 minutes.”
Flight time to Chicago from Cincinnati: about 1:15. Driving time from Justin’s house to Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport, if the traffic is light: 45 minutes. Driving time from O’Hare International Airport to his office, if the traffic is light: 30 minutes.
Plus walking from the gate to baggage claim, then the wait. Figure 30 minutes total.
“To fly out of Cincinnati on a Monday morning on Delta,” he says, “you have to get to the airport, literally, 2 1/2 hours before your flight. To me, that is really non-productive time.”
You add them up and see what you get.
He has been doing this since joining SureBeam in October. Before that, he was working out of an office in Kansas City while living here–flying home sometimes, driving other times, a 10 1/2-hour haul. All dull.
Exactly why he continues to live in Cincinnati while working for companies in Kansas City, then near Chicago, is a valid question. The answer has to do with things like a reluctance to yank kids out of high school, but a move is in the works.
Once upon a time, Mark Justin would have hopped a plane without a second thought. Now, instead of an airline breakfast, he grabs a large cup of coffee at an all-night convenience store 4 miles from his house. It is one of two stops–always just two–he makes between home and his office. “I’m not John Madden,” he says, after a series of turns put the van onto Interstate Highway 74 toward Indianapolis. “I’m not afraid to fly. It used to be you’d fly everywhere. I worked in Chicago for six years. I remember flying to South Bend.”
Not anymore. There are reasons. Some will surprise you. Some will not.
“It’s not that I like to drive that much,” he says. “It’s more for the fact that you get things done while driving.
“If [a colleague] is with you, it’s good meeting time. You can discuss things you wouldn’t have time to discuss in a regular workday.”
And when you’re alone?
“It gets a little old when you’re by yourself,” he says. It is past 6:30 a.m., and the sky isn’t quite so black. “You end up talking on the phone a lot. I’ve got this hands-free deal here. And we have our portable e-mail system.
“I really look forward sometimes to the solitude, of being able to just get think-time.”
The tan van is about an hour from home. The sky is pale blue. The scenery is mostly snow-powdered crop-stubble.
Silence. Talk-radio out of Indianapolis might be on if he were alone at this hour, or an audio book, or one of the CDs (Steely Dan, Sinatra, the Stones) on his six-disc changer. But he has a passenger with questions, and as a courtesy, the silences are brief.
The route, except around Chicago, never varies. The timing changes only when conditions demand it.
“I try to be pretty strategic about my driving,” he says. “I try to time it so I’m not putting myself into situations.”
It is 7:40 a.m., about two hours into the drive, and the van is approaching the I-465 loop that bypasses Indianapolis.
“This is pretty light traffic here,” he says as he steers the van onto the connector ramp. “If we were a half-hour after this, the traffic would be moving a lot slower . . .”
Ahead, a bunch of glowing red tail lights.
“. . . and just as I say that . . .”
The traffic slows, but it’s just a slow pocket. By 8 a.m., the van is off the bypass, on I-65 and doing the limit.
It is still mostly snow-powdered crop-stubble.
It is 8:45 a.m. A sign signals the exit for Tippecanoe Battlefield. Seeing where William Henry Harrison made a wise career move isn’t exactly a mind-blowing experience, but it is one of Indiana’s proudest historic sites.
Mark Justin has never experienced Tippecanoe.
“Nope,” he says, without a quiver of regret. “Haven’t. When I travel around the South, I take time to see those old battlefields . . .”
More stubble. Here and there a farmhouse and a barn, but mostly nothing.
Justin stops for gas and a rest stop outside Rensselaer, Ind., and for nothing else. The drive is snackless; the getaway coffee is the only refreshment. An hour later, the white plumes from the Gary mills are, from this distance, beautiful against a sky that has turned marvelously blue.
Industrial Gary signals the coming of mighty Chicago, which is not his favorite part of the drive. Sometimes he bypasses the city, looping it via I-80 and the tollway.
“When you’re going to hit Chicago,” he says, “if you hit it at the wrong time of the day . . .”
Today, he takes the Skyway into town. It’s the right time of day.
The drive. If it weren’t for the changes that began with 9/11, would he be in the tan van on this day, motoring past steel mills and refineries? Would he be in an airplane on this commute–at least some of the time?
“Yeah,” he says. “I definitely would.”
Which, after all the hours of talk about solitude and think time, was a surprise.
“When I rationalize, the reason `why’ is because of the time and everything,” he says. “But it’s probably a matter of internal risk-management as well.
“I mean, it’s the ultimate in giving up control to someone else when you get on an airplane. I feel like when I’m in a car, that I’m going to get where I’m going and I’m never going to have any problems.”
The tan van turns left into the corporate park and finds the building with the SureBeam sign.
The drive, mainly because of the passenger, has taken about six hours; it is around noon in Ohio and most of Indiana, but 11 a.m. here. The weekend snow, heavier here than in most of Indiana, sparkles in the bright sunshine, and so–despite those dull hours on the interstates–does Mark Justin.
One last question: Are there favorite parts to this drive?
“Yes,” Justin says. “Pulling into the office parking lot–and pulling into my driveway.”
That would come. On his timing. On time.
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Mark Justin
39, Retail marketing director
Years on the road: 15
Annual trips pre-9/11: 30 (No change since 9/11)
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Justin on car travel
BEST
In control of things; time to think, plan, prioritize; potential for long conversations or meetings with colleagues; audio books; control over logistics, security.
WORST
Dullness of the route; traffic while coming in or out of Chicago; rarely, traffic while coming into or out of Indianapolis; rarely, idiot drivers.
