Commuting and Long Distance Relationships

Last night at dinner, I had an interesting exchange with one of my new friends:

Me: Oh, so you're boyfriend lives in the city too?
Karen (the name has been changed just to confuse you): Yeah, he's nine blocks directly south, it's the perfect 1/2 mile walk to visit him.
Me: That must be nice! So did you two live that close together when you met or has one of you moved since you started dating?
Karen: Well, I met him on Match.com and when I put it in, I limited my search to a 1 mile radius. It's easier that way.

Ohhhhh...Manhattan. Where else can you limit your search to 1 mile and expect to find anyone you're even remotely compatible with (Don't worry, Karen assured me that she also met a few psychos from her Match.com search inclusing one who refused to eat in a dark restaurant because he had to keep his kinetic Karma flowing)?

And where else is it absolutely unheard of to date someone who lives more than a mile or two from you? When I tell people that my boyfriend lives in New Jersey, they look at me like it's a foreign country (it's about 15 miles, by the way). So in essence, I guess you could say that I am in a long distance relationship. I mean, sometimes I go a week without seeing Taylor. Other times we talk on the phone and mention the weather, forgetting that we are just miles apart. And at times it seems that you need a passport to cross the GW Bridge. In fact, as I tried to look up the amount of time it takes to get to the city from various places, I stumbled upon some interesting statistics about New York City, especially its transportation systems:

**It has largest subway network in the world by track mileage (656 miles of mainline track).
**The average commute is just miles, but the average commute TIME is 34.2 minutes.
**New York City is the only locality in the United States where more than half of all households do not own a car (the figure is even higher in Manhattan, over 75%; nationally, the rate is 8%)
**About one in every three users of mass transit in the United States and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in New York and its suburbs
**Gasoline consumption in New York City is at the rate where the national average was in the 1920
**More than 12,000 taxis operate in New York City

Oh, New York, you never fail to give me wonderful things to think and write about :)!