The alarm woke Larry Mattis at 3:15 a.m. yesterday, an hour and a half earlier than normal. On Day 2 of the transit workers' strike, Mattis knew he would need plenty of extra time to get from his Collingswood home to his job at the King of Prussia mall.

On an ordinary day, Mattis has a tough commute. It takes him more than an hour, sometimes 90 minutes, to get to King of Prussia via PATCO train and SEPTA's Route 125 bus. As any driver knows, the Schuylkill Expressway is inaptly named.

But yesterday was no ordinary day. Rather than his usual two-step commute, Mattis had to find a new way to work. With just one extra leg and a whole lot of waiting, he spent more than three hours en route - lots of time to share gripes with his fellow travelers and a reporter and photographer who tagged along for the ride.

Mattis, 54, had a day off Tuesday from his job in the stockroom at Crate & Barrel, which gave him time to weigh his options. He chose an alternate route that SEPTA recommended online: taking the R5 Paoli/Thorndale train to Villanova, and then transferring to a special strike version of the Route 125 bus.

The extra day also gave him time to reflect on the transit workers who had upended his routine. Like other budget-conscious riders who rely on SEPTA, Mattis already seemed to find his patience wearing thin.

"I'm very upset at SEPTA's workers," he said as the day's first R5 left Suburban Station at 5:44 a.m., a minute behind schedule. "Based on the offer in the news, they've got it good - a signing bonus and everything. I think they should take it."

And he already knew his strike route would not get him to work on time.

"I'm supposed to be there at 7," he said, glancing nervously at his watch. "I don't think that's going to happen."

His skepticism was warranted. Though the R5 arrived at Villanova at 6:10, as dawn broke, Mattis and a half-dozen other commuters waited outside the station for about 45 minutes, increasingly skeptical that the Route 125 bus would actually make the off-schedule stop SEPTA was promising online.

After about 20 minutes and word that many of SEPTA's suburban buses were being blocked by pickets at an Upper Darby depot, one of Mattis' companions gave up.

Chuck Delross, 25, decided to hoof about a mile across Villanova University's campus to a stop on SEPTA's Norristown High Speed Line, a trolley Delross ordinarily takes to get to his job in Gulph Mills.

He usually connects to the High Speed Line via the Broad Street Subway and Market-Frankford El, two lines shut by the strike. For now, SEPTA recommends he reach it via the R5 and the Route 125 bus.

So yesterday - after calling out strikebound on Tuesday - Delross bicycled to Suburban Station from his South Philadelphia home to begin the commute.

The connection seemed like a complex, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance routine that relied on perfect timing, Delross thought. Now, he was worried about being late, even though he had awakened at 4:30 a.m., two hours earlier than usual.

"It's a trip that isn't all that easy to begin with, that's being made a lot less easy. I'm not happy," he said.

Before going, Delross voiced his frustration with the Transport Workers Union's decision to strike during a historic economic downturn: "I'd like to think that I'm generally pro-union, but I think that this is a bad time for a strike."

Mattis is not a Philadelphia native. He hails from Atlanta and moved here seven years ago with his partner, an information-technology staffer at a Center City law firm. He is an Atlanta Braves and Falcons fan, though he is warming to the Phillies and Eagles.

But he has lived here long enough to have endured one SEPTA strike, the seven-day walkout in 2005, and has heard tales of 1998's marathon 40-day work stoppage.

So Mattis, who wears a "Yes We Can" button on his blue and green Pacific Trail jacket, has enough experience to offer an opinion on the city's sometimes-assertive unions. He, too, thinks the transit workers overreached.

"It's just really bad timing," he said.

Fellow commuters on the Route 125 bus, the last leg of their long journey, echoed his sentiments.

"There are a lot of people out of work that would be happy with their package," said Mike Allen, 28, a customer-service staffer at Nordstrom.

At 7:15 a.m., Mattis arrived at the mall. He walked into the store 10 minutes later - 25 minutes late after a trip that took about three hours.

The trip home took about as long, starting with an hour's wait for the bus.

His plan for today, though, was to do exactly the same.

"There's no other way," Mattis said with a resigned laugh. "I'm hoping for a very quick resolution."

Contact staff writer Jeff Gelles at 215-854-2776 or jgelles@phillynews.com.