ALBANY - Mike Dreher loves working for a circuit board company near Oregon City. He also loves living in Albany, his hometown since the age of 14.

If that means spending close to $3 a gallon for gasoline to make the 600-mile commute each week, so be it.

"Albany's home, and I don't want to go anywhere else," the 40-year-old said.

Dreher is among Americans nationwide willing to sacrifice time on the road for the job and home life they want.

Across the nation, studies show more people are spending more time in the car getting to work, even as gas prices and global emissions concerns continue to rise.

The 2005 American Community Survey, compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, calculated there are about 128 million commuters nationwide, up from about 111 million in 1990. Almost 80 percent of respondents in the most recent survey drove alone.

About 94 million of the 2005 commuters traveled to work within their home county. However, the number working in different counties has grown 85 percent since 1980.

In Linn County, the average commute time was 22.5 minutes in 2005, the sixth-longest in Oregon.

Benton County had the shortest commute time, at 17.2 minutes. Clackamas County came in highest at 25.7 minutes. Oregonians as a whole averaged 21.9 minutes, up from 19.6 in 1990.

Some commuters say they can't afford to live near their jobs. Oregon Business magazine reported home prices in the Portland metro area rose almost 33 percent between 2000 and 2005. The situation was similar for Eugene and Salem, where prices rose 30 and 24 percent, respectively.

Some drivers say they prefer the quality of life they find elsewhere. Still others drive to multiple locations, making a move impractical.

That's the situation for Aaron Smith. The Corvallis resident will begin his fourth year of pharmacy school this fall and is spending his summer at a variety of locations to intern for his residency requirements.

Right now, he drives his 1996 Saturn to Salem every week to work in a pharmacy for the Department of Corrections. In August, he'll switch to the Target store in Albany. In the meantime, he still works 40 hours a week, traveling between other pharmacies in Albany and Salem.

While the university was in session this past spring, Smith was traveling to Portland five days a week to attend classes at Oregon Health & Science University.

He would leave his car in Albany, carpool with other students to Portland, return to Albany, drive his own vehicle to Salem to work, then head home to Corvallis. On Saturdays, he'd drive back to his Salem job, a schedule that continues this summer.

"In one year, everything will get better," sighed his wife, Shannon, who stays at home with the couple's three small children. "I'm putting up with it now because it has to be, but I see light at the end of the tunnel and it doesn't consist of being on the road all the time."

Carpools wouldn't work for Gary Arne, unless they were willing to leave at 5 a.m. and return to Albany by 9 p.m. on a schedule that varies by the week.

Arne, 46, keeps the machines running at Intel in Hillsboro. He travels 160 miles a day, filling up the tank on his 2000 Dodge Dakota every other day.

If he had to, he said, he could afford to live closer to work, but it wouldn't be his choice. He can get "twice the house" in Albany that he can in the Portland area, he said, and he likes mid-valley neighborhoods better.

"It's a nice, quiet community. Not a lot of crime," he said.

A job switch isn't in the cards, either. Hewlett-Packard is the mid-valley center for technology jobs, and most of them aren't related to manufacturing, he said.

Plus, he said, his Intel schedule allows him three- and four-day workweeks, which makes the drive worthwhile. "It's really a great schedule."

Arne works with people who spend nearly as much time on the road as he does just driving to Hillsboro from the other side of Portland.

"People are making decisions for their quality of life after work, so to speak," he said. "That's what's becoming important."

Dreher, the circuit board production manager, says his daily drive is no big deal compared to what he used to do. He spent two years traveling the nation as a management consultant before taking the job at Sunstone Circuits in Mulino, near Oregon City.

"He was only home weekends. It was horrible. I was a single mom," said his wife, Debbie, who stays home with the couple's five children.

"Commuting is nothing compared to that," Dreher agreed.

Dreher, 40, puts about 120 miles per day on his Pontiac Solstice GXP. (He needs the power, he said, to get around the farm equipment and Winnebagos that share the rural roads he takes instead of the freeway.)

He'd love a light rail connection so he could spend the commuting time tapping on his laptop instead of listening to podcasts or sports talk radio.

But the job is worth the time on the road, he said, and neither he nor his wife have any intention of moving away from Albany.

"The town," Debbie said, "has everything we need."