Downtown Alley

Once again we have landed on Valentine's Day, a date which is supposed to be the most romantic 24 hours on the calendar. Personally, I think you should try to be at least a little romantic to your significant other every day of the year and instead use Valentine's Day to show the world at large a little love. Anyway, since I continue to think my private life is none of the internet's business, instead of writing about romance today we will keep up this blog's tradition of instead writing about something I love. This year's object of my affection? Those moments when my sense of direction actually works.

In the last year I have come to appreciate just how good my GPS is at getting me where I need to go. When I first got it I would question whether or not it was accurate and occasionally disobey its orders. But, after a few wrong turns and finding out I had a knack for taking the long way without realizing it, at this point I pretty much go where I am told. However, this obedience only works when I am going someplace I have never been before. I have a pretty good memory for directions and after I have driven to a location once I am about 80% able to get back there without any help the next time around, which means on return trips I leave the GPS in the glove compartment. Where I get into trouble is when I am somewhat close to my final destination and run into some kind of construction or can't find parking and am required to take an couple of unanticipated turns. Because I live in a city famous for its crooked streets which suddenly are one-way in the opposite direction I find myself grappling with the decision to either break out the GPS to keep me pointed in the right direction or taking the street I assume will lead me back to where I need to be. Usually I try to figure it out for myself, even though I only get it right about 40% of the time and often end up far away from my ultimate destination.

I bring this up because this afternoon I was driving in the city and could not find a parking space. Mayor Tom Menino had declared that all parking meters in the city would be free for the day, as a little gift to us all for surviving the blizzard last weekend. That sounded really nice in theory... right up to the moment when you discovered that most of these parking spots were still covered with snow. I must have driven by 50 parking spots which technically were open and free, only the spaces were three feet wide because the other half consisted of a 4-foot high snow bank. I couldn't have parked there in a motorcycle. (I can only hope for the Mayor's wife's sake that he is better at giving personal gifts.) Due to the lack of spaces I ended up driving several blocks past my destination before I needed to turn around and unfortunately you can only do that at certain intersections in this part of Boston. So, when I finally found a side street where I could turn around I had a dilemma - try to do a complete U-turn (not easy with my truck's turning radius) or go down the cross street and start working my way back towards my destination on the side-streets and hope to stumble upon an open spot along the way. Since I knew how poorly the street I was on had been cleared I went with the side streets. I think you know where this is going.

I was only about 100 yards down the street when I ran into a very large problem. The already narrow, one-way street was being blocked by an oil delivery truck. Normally there would have been enough space to get by, except the snowbank on the other side of the street had pushed the cars parked on that side a yard into the road, which meant there was about 4 feet of clearance between a parked car and the oil truck. (For those of you who thinks this serves me right for driving a big SUV, a mini-Cooper wouldn't have fit through this opening.) I would have said something to the delivery guy, only I had seen him get out of the truck as I was turning onto the street and not only did he not look like the kind of person who would care about my situation, I am slightly convinced he parked this way on purpose, just to dick us all over (clearly hasn't heard about my "Show the World Love on Valentine's Day" idea). I thought I was going to have to reverse my way back up the street, but the idea of trying to back into a busy intersection was not how I wanted to spend my afternoon. Besides, as I was weighing the pros and cons of that idea another truck started down the street and got stuck behind me, effectively ending that as an option. I thought about putting my car into park because I wasn't going anywhere for a while, but that was when I notice what was on my left - an alley.

I never drive through alleys in the city because I believe if people were meant to be back there these alleys would be main roads. Typically they aren't wide enough because the only people who are supposed to be back there are the people who live in the buildings and this is where they park their cars. Plus, if TV shows are to be believed it is where 95% of all murders and drug deals take place and I don't have an desire to be a star witness for the prosecution. However, with no other option at the moment I decided to take a leap of faith and squeeze my truck through the barely-wide-enough entrance. While it was a tight squeeze for a truck that size, I was immensely happy that I had an SUV, because suddenly I was effectively offroading in the middle of the city. This alley hadn't been plowed and was barely paved (actually, it would have been better if it hadn't been, because if there was no asphalt the road wouldn't have featured potholes you could lose a dog in). The only good news was that after a few hundred yards of wondering what kind of shocks I should upgrade to I emerged from the other side of the alley... right onto the side street I had been trying to get onto in the first place.

Admittedly, it took a second to realize that my last-ditched effort had actually worked in my favor. I know I shouldn't be surprised that driving perpendicular to the road I was going to be on resulted in getting to the cross street I had been aiming for (I assume this is happens all the time when you drive in city laid out in a grid pattern) and that driving one block behind a row of buildings doesn't seem like much of a shortcut but considering the number of times I have done this same scenario, only to get to the end of the street and find out I can't turn right or the street is closed for a water main break, it was damn near miraculous in my book. Now, in a perfect world the story would end with me surprisingly emerging onto the street and finding a perfectly-cleared parking spot at a free meter. Obviously that didn't happen and given the number of spots which won't be able to be used for another couple of weeks I knew not to press my luck. Besides, at that point I was just happy that I didn't take three lefts and somehow ending up on the other side of the river. Trust me, if that had happened the theme of today's post would have been very different.