It is 6 a.m. on one of those West Seattle autumn mornings where, the moment you step outside, it's as if you're at sea. A pea-soup fog envelops the land, pierced here and there by the glow of street lights; and the heavy smell of seaweed permeates the air.

I have to leave these sea-like surroundings and drive to work, and just as I get in my car the blast of a fog horn echoes through the air. As I start the descent down the east side of the peninsula the fog lessens, and Mount Rainier becomes visible off in the distance, a gray silhouette on the predawn sky. The Duwamish Valley is fog-free and, as I cross the bridge, I leave the last wisps of mist behind.

I am now in drab-land, the Sodo area, a vast collection of mostly dreary buildings. The speed limit on the Spokane Street Viaduct is 35mph, but this early in the morning traffic is not backed up, and most of the cars zoom through at 50. Even though I have to get on to northbound I-5, I stay to the right for a while to let the speeders pass by. I am always tempted to join in, and shave a whopping 15 seconds off my commute, but with a deferred ticket on my record, I don't take the chance.

As I merge onto the freeway I turn my eyes away from the old Rainer brewery. Its big R was once a welcome landmark, and how I loved the smell of hops that occasionally wafted strong. But now the only thing wafting here now is the visual stink of the horrible colors they've painted the buildings. Occasionally, when I drive past the old brewery, I get a pungent memory smell, an olfactory hallucination. I think I can smell hops brewing; a smell my father always said reminded him of cow pee on hay. Now doesn't that make you want a big glass of beer?

Nine hours later, as I return from work, I make the slow crawl from I-5 onto Spokane Street, and with that ticket on my mind I slow to 35mph. I am tailgated for a while, but when the impatient driver realizes I'm not going to speed, he moves to the left and puts the pedal to the metal. And as I make the descent down the west side of the bridge a 54 bus passes me doing 55. After getting off on the Admiral Way exit I stay to the right and start the painfully slow 30 mph crawl up Admiral Hill. A jeep tailgates me all the way, and a dozen cars zip by on the left, all doing 45. Once at the top of the hill I negotiate my way past the 50 or so stop lights that have appeared on this stretch of road over the past few years.

The following day is a Saturday. In the morning a thick, pea-soup fog envelopes the land, pierced here and there by the glow of street lights; and the heavy smell of seaweed permeates the air. But today I don't have to leave these sea-like surroundings and drive to work. So I hike to the Charleston standpipe, the highest ground on the north end of the peninsula, and walk east to find a view of Rainier. Even though it is 50 miles away it looms over the landscape, basking now in the orange glow of sunrise.

We live in a beautiful place, though all the excessive development, traffic, and population growth, makes me forget that sometimes. As for that stressful traffic, I found out the hard way that the best way to fight it is to slow down. It is hard to do, and may cost you an extra 60 seconds or so of drive time. But if you don't worry about it, you'll have one worry less.

Marc Calhoun may be contacted via wseditor@robinsonnews.com