( 9:56 AM )
New parking garage
I had a bit of a change in my life recently. Nothing earth-shattering or emotionally significant. But a change, nonetheless. I’m parking in a new parking garage at the train station. Yeah, I know. What’s the big deal? Well, I’ve been parking in the same train station parking lot for two years and that parking lot has become part of my daily routine. Not only the parking lot, but the people I walk with from the train to the parking lot have become part of my routine.
It’s not like they’re friends of mine or anything. I don’t know any of them, and nobody really talks to each other, except a “hey” or “what’s up”, but these are the people I walk with along that half mile walk to the parking lot.
Anyway, the parking lot I’ve been parking in for 2 years got shut down. It wasn’t really a legal lot to begin with. It was an abandoned building parking lot that commuters started squatting on for free, rather then pay for parking in one of the parking garages.
So now, 200 cars or so need to find new parking arrangements. A few people have optioned to go to another free lot which is further away, while others, like me, have decided to suck up the $30/month to pay for parking in one of parking garages that is about a half mile in the opposite direction. (There are actual train station garages, but they charge $80/month.)
So this week was the start of my new commute to the new parking garage, and it is really just a study in human behavior.
This commute is new to everyone, so there really isn’t any rhythm to it. I miss the old crowd. We had a good rhythm and good system. We’d all get off the train and take a left off the platform, elbowing and bumping to get ahead of the crowd. The object was to get to your car first, so you didn’t have to wait in line to get out of the parking lot. As we’d walk down the street, some would cross over at the first intersection, while other would wait for a break in the traffic and cross in the middle of the street.
There was one guy who use to cross the street without waiting for the light, stopping traffic for the rest of us to cross. I miss that guy. There was also that short, little fat guy that would speed walk past everybody. It always annoyed me that I could never catch up with him. I miss him too. We all worked well together.
I have a new crowd now. I don’t recognize everybody and nobody has distinguished themselves as a definitive crowd leader. Everyone is just kind of all over the place. First off, this new parking garage is on the other side of the tracks. So now we have to take a right off the platform. The route to the garage is not as tricky with traffic pitfalls and crosswalks, but it does have a single file walkway for a bit, that causes some problems for some of the fast walkers. There is a bit of a new urgency to getting to the garage first, as the garage exit gets gridlocked pretty quick.
It will take me a while to get use to this new change, as I hesitate when I get off train each evening, not sure which way to go, but hopefully it will be come routine, just like everything else.
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