Parking Hell
This is an easy target, but too juicy to pass up.
Somewhat against our better judgment, we drove to University Village Mall for some late-term Christmas shopping.
Our Spidey-Sense was tingling when it took us twenty minutes to circle the lot before settling on the “800-stall” parking tower as a place to leave the vehicle. At this point, we probably should have heeded our intuitions and gotten the hell out of there, but the consumerist mandate prevailed.
We had to climb to the fourth of six floors to find an open spot, but we all rejoiced when finally exiting the car to face the comparatively benign crowds of human beings in the shops.
Jen’s Dad, Bob, and I lasted a store and a half before retiring to the Ram Restaurant for a couple of microbrews.
After Jen and Mimi joined us for lunch, we headed back to the car, where we were met with a seemingly endless and apparently frozen line of automobiles all trying to exit the parking structure simultaneously.
The first ten or fifteen minutes of sitting in line were humorous. We joked about being trapped for the rest of the night and the possibility of driving off the side of the building to escape.
The next twenty minutes began to get ridiculous. We inched along at a snail’s pace, fascinated and appalled by the merging behaviors of cars around us.
During the last fifteen minutes it took us to finally get free, we were alternately giddy and hysterical; Mimi and I were reduced to holding an arm-punching battle in the backseat; Jen grimaced at every slow turn down the ramp; her dad just shook his head and compared it to the madness of casino parking his hometown of Las Vegas.
I just kept thinking how different an experience it would have been on bikes; we would have gotten in and out in mere minutes and still had plenty of time for a third beer.
Somewhat against our better judgment, we drove to University Village Mall for some late-term Christmas shopping.
Our Spidey-Sense was tingling when it took us twenty minutes to circle the lot before settling on the “800-stall” parking tower as a place to leave the vehicle. At this point, we probably should have heeded our intuitions and gotten the hell out of there, but the consumerist mandate prevailed.
We had to climb to the fourth of six floors to find an open spot, but we all rejoiced when finally exiting the car to face the comparatively benign crowds of human beings in the shops.
Jen’s Dad, Bob, and I lasted a store and a half before retiring to the Ram Restaurant for a couple of microbrews.
After Jen and Mimi joined us for lunch, we headed back to the car, where we were met with a seemingly endless and apparently frozen line of automobiles all trying to exit the parking structure simultaneously.
The first ten or fifteen minutes of sitting in line were humorous. We joked about being trapped for the rest of the night and the possibility of driving off the side of the building to escape.
The next twenty minutes began to get ridiculous. We inched along at a snail’s pace, fascinated and appalled by the merging behaviors of cars around us.
During the last fifteen minutes it took us to finally get free, we were alternately giddy and hysterical; Mimi and I were reduced to holding an arm-punching battle in the backseat; Jen grimaced at every slow turn down the ramp; her dad just shook his head and compared it to the madness of casino parking his hometown of Las Vegas.
I just kept thinking how different an experience it would have been on bikes; we would have gotten in and out in mere minutes and still had plenty of time for a third beer.
posted by Professor Dave at 4:52 PM
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