Parking

I made an early appointment downtown St. Paul for a kidney ultrasound, another step in trying to figure out my high blood pressure. I couldn’t eat or drink before the test, so I thought the earlier, the better. When I got to the parking lot at 6:30am, I was the second car in the lot. I’ve been there before (with lots more cars) and have found the spots relatively narrow, but most annoying, the lanes between rows also quite narrow. I hate having to slowly weasel my way in or out of a spot while someone is waiting, so a lovely benefit of my earliness was my choice of any spot I wanted. (I did not want the one way in the corner that the other car was in.) I confidently pulled in, and opened my door to get out.

Mmmm. There seemed to be a lot of space between my car and the line. I had plenty of time before my 6:45 appointment, so I got back in and, using my back up camera, lined up the lines so I wouldn’t be making it harder for anyone else. I got out again.

Mmmm. Still really far from the line. I walked around to the passenger side to check; maybe it was a reallllly wide spot. Nope. Not too bad, but kinda close over there. With absolutely no one else around, I figured, what the heck, go again. Backed up, came over and forward, stopped, opened the door, and looked.

I apparently was in some sort of parking vortex of you cannot change where you are. It looked like I hadn’t moved over at all. Since I had pulled forward in the spot so I could pull forward out of it instead of backing up, I figured if the car next to me (if they didn’t pull through) would open up away from my car anyway and wouldn’t be crowded. I locked up and headed in. Except that the sign on the door said the doors did not open until 6:45. Huh. I sat on the extremely cold metal bench next to the door for 4 seconds, then leaned against the wall and did the Wordle. (My drive to the big city inspired me to use SCARY as my first word – even if it hadn’t been scary – which let me get STORY in two! Woohoo.) With more time to kill, I went back and took the picture of today.

I was very good at lying on my side and getting ultrasounded and was done in half the expected time. I bopped back to the lot. No one was parked on either side of me. I looked at my car. Not only wasn’t it centered, but it was a little crooked. I think I do better when there are cars around after all.