A Productive Commute

According to this article I have a “megacommute.” I average 11hrs/wk commuting. I hardly consider it “wasted.”

This morning on my commute (ie. bike ride through the trees with kids) we discussed:

• How people get their last names
• Why they got them traditionally from their fathers
• Why traditional marriages were 1 man + 1 woman, and why that is changing
• (Reasons for all of the above: PATRIARCHY, basically)
• How people change their names
• That their family name was almost “Smouders”
• That I regret not changing our last names to Smouders when Jenny & I got married
• How we planned our family; and that some families don’t plan them (which is OK too)
• How babies’ bodies (i.e. chromosomes) decide if they’re going to be boys or girls before they are born
• Why passing family names is important for genealogical & historical reasons
• That the Souders name is dying so I think it’s important to pass it on
• How Grandpa Vern (and his mother) used last names to research our ancestors
• That some of our ancestors fought in wars, and which wars they fought in

Then, after I dropped the kids off at school, it was Breakfast on the Bridges so I stopped for free Girl Scout cookies on the Hawthorne.

I’d call that a pretty productive commute!