It’s been a rainy weekend here in the Bay Area. The forecast is calling for more rain the rest of the week, too. I’m actually in favor of some rain next Sunday, if it means I can stay home and watch NFL football instead of being out at the tennis courts.
The wet roads scare Californians like you wouldn’t imagine, so it makes for a pretty nasty commute at times. Of course, the fact that April and I haven’t gotten out of the house on time for quite a while now, doesn’t help. This morning, we left Alameda at around 8:45 a.m. and it took about 40 minutes to go four miles to the West Oakland BART station. From there, even though the rain was coming down hard, the road was a little more clear for me to get to campus.
Today is the first day of spring semester classes at the university, so I knew parking was going to be a hit-or-miss situation. I normally park under Haas Pavilion and stay covered all the way to the office. If parking isn’t available, the nearest alternative is down the street in the pouring rain. I drove into the underground parking lot just to at least convince myself that I had tried my best and low and behold, I can see that the parking attendant has already begun to stack-park the late-arriving cars.
I never leave my keys with the parking attendant here at work because it becomes a hassle to have to get downstairs just to retrieve my keys and move my car at 5 p.m. before coming back up for one more hour of work. I’m also uneasy about having someone else operate my temperamental vehicle, so needless to say, without an open parking spot, there aren’t very many alternatives.
Since I was coming back from a long weekend, I had my laptop with me; along with my personal bag, a camera bag, my lunch bag and my Nalgene bottle in hand. Finding a parking spot today would have been more ideal than on any other day. As I rounded the corner of the lot, out of the corner of my right eye, I saw someones reverse lights turn on. I slammed on the brakes and stared for a moment. I wanted to make sure they weren’t just adjusting their initial parking attempt. Then, all of a sudden, the car backed completely out and left the most marvelous sight I had seen all week; an open parking spot. I pulled right in and got my stuff out of the backseat and headed up to the office. My first day back at work off a long weekend could not have started better. I just hope the rest of the week is as fortuitously laid out for me.