Sep 28, 2016 By Jacob Meyer sports Editor 7 min read

Dr. James Bush has been teaching at Waynesburg University for 25 years. For all 25 of those years, he has lived on the east end of Pittsburgh.

A professor of mathematics by trade, he can’t help but count the time he’s spent in his car and how many miles he’s driven in the last quarter-century.

It takes Bush 58 miles to get to Waynesburg every day, a 116 mile round-trip. In the last 25 years, Bush has driven nearly 500,000 miles to and from work, totaling more than 7,500 hours in the car. 

Bush hates his commute, but said that it is worth it.

“I feel like I’m part of a family here,” Bush said. “I’ve got one of the greatest jobs on the planet. I really like my position in the department. I get to teach a lot of the upper level courses. I really get to stretch here. I love the students here. I’ve been at other places, but I’ve found that the students are very real here.”

Bush surely isn’t the only university employee with a long commute; James Tanda, instructor of criminal justice administration, lives in Butler County and travels 140 miles and three hours round-trip. Tanda, who has been at the university for four years, said the mission of Waynesburg University is what makes it worth the commute.

“I love the university and I love the work, or I wouldn’t be doing that,” Tanda said. 

“It’s exhausting at times, but it’s worth it when I get here. I always tell people that the toughest part of my day is getting here and getting home. Everything else in between is just great, meaning, while I’m here it’s just great.”

Tanda has three children, and he said the commute, at least 15 hours a week in the car, is something that takes away from family time.

“That’s time that is away from the family,” he said. “It’s difficult often times to get that back.”

Dr. Chad Sherman, an assistant professor of communication, understands the difficulty a long commute can have on a family. Sherman, who is in his sixth year at Waynesburg, lives 60 miles away in Greensburg and travels about two hours round-trip. 

His wife teaches first grade in Indiana, Pennsylvania, which is also an hour away from Greensburg. Sherman has a nine-month old son, and he said it is difficult spending 10 hours a week in the car when he could be spending some of that time with his son.

“It stinks that there’s time where I could be spending time with my son, and I’m in the car driving or stuck in traffic,” he said.

“He gets up around 6 a.m., so I get to see him right as I’m leaving for work at least and then I’m home before my wife comes home, so when he’s home I’m already there and I can spend as time with him as I can before he goes to bed.”

While the commute isn’t ideal, Sherman said it allows both him and his wife to have the careers they want. 

“It allows us both to have careers in what we went to college for, what we really want to do. We both really love our students,” Sherman said. “Plus, at Waynesburg, I don’t have to deal with large classes. Like there are bigger colleges closer to Greensburg that have bigger classes, and I would probably teach the same class two or three times a semester. So I wouldn’t be able to teach as diverse of a range of topics that I’m interested in.”

Bush’s wife works only one mile from where they live in the east end of Pittsburgh, so the weekends are their time to “kick back.” But if they go anywhere, she drives.

“Fine, you’ll be doing the driving,” he says. “Don’t make me get in the car and drive. Don’t make me do that.”

Bush said the drive typically isn’t a problem in the early fall and late spring, but when the weather turns for the worst, Bush calls on a friend who lives in town to help him out.

“I’m grateful to my friend Paul Sielski, [professor of mathematics], because occasionally I can stay over at his place, especially when the weather is bad,” Bush said. “That’s the most stressful time of year. That’s when I get cranky.”

Bad weather can turn Tanda’s commute from an hour and a half into two or three hours. What comes with driving that much, and driving in bad weather that often, is the breakdown of his vehicle.

“My car is just three years old and it has 105,000 miles on it already,” he said.

“Tires, fuel, wear and tear on the vehicle is an expensive part of that long commute.”

Tanda said the price of gas, especially at its’ peak of nearly $4 a gallon, would cost him hundreds of dollars a week. That’s no different for Bush, who said the amount he has paid for gas in the last 25 years is astronomical.

For Sherman and his wife, who travel about 200 miles combined a day, they spent about $700-800 a month on gas when prices were at its apex.

“At that point, that was right after we got married, so that was our second highest bill. Our rent was a little bit more,” Sherman said. “Our second highest bill was gas, which is very sobering and not so fun to think about.”

Sherman said he is lucky that he typically doesn’t hit traffic with his commute – something Bush wishes he could say. Traffic dictates the time Bush leaves for work and the time he leaves to go home.

Bush leaves at 5:30 a.m. and arrives at Waynesburg at 6:30 a.m. When he leaves work depends on what day it is and what his traffic apps say. Bush can tell what type of traffic it is by the way the cars are moving.

“I can be in a traffic situation, and I can know whether it’s routine or if there’s an accident,” he said. “I can just tell by the pattern that it’s moving.”

Bush said he gets unnerved when traffic is caused when people slow down to see a parked police car that has just pulled someone over.

“I just want to lay on the horn,” he said. “I really, really hate that.”

Bush said he listens mostly to NPR or WJPA, but he will turn on classical music if he needs to relax. Tanda loves talk radio, but he listens to Van Morrison to relax, “because of all the road rage around me on the highway.”

Sherman has 22 different podcasts on his iPhone, which he listens to at 1.3 times normal speed. 

What they listen to speeds up the drive. Speeding does the same, and Sherman admits he typically drives 10 miles per hour over the speed limit, while Bush follows the speed limit on cruise control. 

Tanda, the criminal justice instructor, said he obeys the law.

“But I do keep up with the flow of traffic,” he said.