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Not Quite a GIP
Feb. 12th, 2007 09:16 amYesterday, I went out to move the car. I was parked in a spot slated for cleaning on Monday (no parking Monday 8:30-10:00 AM), and I didn't want to have to rush back and try to move the car after bringing the kids to school, or, conversely, get up early enough to get out and back in before waking them.
The block on which I live ends in a corner on which there are several groceries run by and for the Indian and Pakistani communities that dominate this end of this neighborhood. But since they're the best such in the city, they're shopped at heavily by Indian and Pakistani folks from well beyond this neighborhood. Since many of them drive over here to be able to bring home a week's groceries, that particular block, which always has a fair amount of traffic (it's the only one-way going its direction in several blocks) gets VERY heavily trafficked on the weekends. This is my preferred parking block primarily because the exit from our building via the basement ramp leads to it, so that when I shop, I can bring my purchases in via the ramp (if I've shopped with the car, I almost certainly have the wheeled cart with me). The real problem is that there are two very good blocks for parking on that are accessible either by this block, or by driving about three blocks out of the way. (Yes, I did that a couple of times, too.)
So I got outside at about 3:00 to move the car -- later than I really ought to have, as I know that it's far easier before noon. But I got a late start. And I paid for it; it took 20 minutes to get from one end of the block to the other, which I did twice, in circling around looking for a spot. Meanwhile, as I was exiting my spot, someone else was getting out across the street (in a "Tuesday" spot), but two spots back, where I couldn't just back up to take it. And as I circled, I saw not one, but two other spots JUST as someone else in front of me did, leaving me out in the cold.
Along the way, I popped over to the CVS three blocks away to try to replenish our supplies of Diet Coke for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maya_a and juice for the kids. The best they could offer was Cherry Coke Zero and sugared apple juice (we try hard to buy the "natural" unsweetened sort -- it's plenty sweet as is -- and then dilute it by 50%), and moreover, they had only one of the two Sunday newspapers I wanted. Rassenfrassen...
The wait didn't help much in terms of the traffic easing up, but I did eventually get a spot, down the hill and a long block away -- and walked up that hill and a couple of blocks to get the supplies, in the (admittedly, not as bad as it's been) cold.
The real kicker was when I got inside and sank gratefully into the computer chair in the office. I had popped the radio on, and as it often is, it was set to newsradio; they got to their every-ten-minutes (on the ones, you New Yorkers :-) traffic report and what did they end with: "Alt-side is supended tomorrow, Monday."
Sh-yah. Time to go move BACK to a Monday spot :-)
The block on which I live ends in a corner on which there are several groceries run by and for the Indian and Pakistani communities that dominate this end of this neighborhood. But since they're the best such in the city, they're shopped at heavily by Indian and Pakistani folks from well beyond this neighborhood. Since many of them drive over here to be able to bring home a week's groceries, that particular block, which always has a fair amount of traffic (it's the only one-way going its direction in several blocks) gets VERY heavily trafficked on the weekends. This is my preferred parking block primarily because the exit from our building via the basement ramp leads to it, so that when I shop, I can bring my purchases in via the ramp (if I've shopped with the car, I almost certainly have the wheeled cart with me). The real problem is that there are two very good blocks for parking on that are accessible either by this block, or by driving about three blocks out of the way. (Yes, I did that a couple of times, too.)
So I got outside at about 3:00 to move the car -- later than I really ought to have, as I know that it's far easier before noon. But I got a late start. And I paid for it; it took 20 minutes to get from one end of the block to the other, which I did twice, in circling around looking for a spot. Meanwhile, as I was exiting my spot, someone else was getting out across the street (in a "Tuesday" spot), but two spots back, where I couldn't just back up to take it. And as I circled, I saw not one, but two other spots JUST as someone else in front of me did, leaving me out in the cold.
Along the way, I popped over to the CVS three blocks away to try to replenish our supplies of Diet Coke for
maya_a and juice for the kids. The best they could offer was Cherry Coke Zero and sugared apple juice (we try hard to buy the "natural" unsweetened sort -- it's plenty sweet as is -- and then dilute it by 50%), and moreover, they had only one of the two Sunday newspapers I wanted. Rassenfrassen...The wait didn't help much in terms of the traffic easing up, but I did eventually get a spot, down the hill and a long block away -- and walked up that hill and a couple of blocks to get the supplies, in the (admittedly, not as bad as it's been) cold.
The real kicker was when I got inside and sank gratefully into the computer chair in the office. I had popped the radio on, and as it often is, it was set to newsradio; they got to their every-ten-minutes (on the ones, you New Yorkers :-) traffic report and what did they end with: "Alt-side is supended tomorrow, Monday."
Sh-yah. Time to go move BACK to a Monday spot :-)
