the best part of waking up (early)...

is finding parking.

Parking in the city sucks. There just aren't enough parking spaces to go around, especially around college campuses, like USF. Because of this, 2 hour time limits have been enforced on street parking. Money hungry entrepreneurs have caught on and opened up parking lots charging exorbitant amounts of money. Even the gestapo-esque meter attendants have realized that they can make a killing around the university.

They seem to slap the ticket for just about anything: parked during street cleaning (even though the street cleaner already came), wheels were not turned on an incline (hello!? even a coin won't roll off that!), parked too far from the curb... Driving around in their small blue and white tricycles while chalking up tires, they aim to terrorize the innocent students and professors.

Numerous times I have found myself driving aimlessly around campus 6 or 8 times trying to find parking sweating from stress because I'm late for class. Recently, I've tried to cut this stress out by waking up at the crack of dawn to score a space. While some would view this as taking the initiative and being responsible, I have a different view.

Who the hell wants to wake up at 5:30 in the morning when it's still dark out (and extremely cold) to drive to school for parking? Countless times I've cursed the parking situation at school, but now I've come to appreciate it. More so this morning when I got to school a few minutes before 6:30 and found ample parking spaces all whispering, "Park here." By this time, the street cleaner had rounded the corner of Parker and Golden Gate Avenue, continuing down to Masonic. The sloshing of the machine was accompanied by the revving of engines as cars, parked along Golden Gate and side streets, wheeled into the clean spaces. This phenomenon is defintely worth seeing.

It must have made the day for those select few who came early this morning, I know it did for me. Funny how something like parking can make or break someone's day. It's definitely one stress I avoided, even if just for today. No $40 ticket, no moving the car after 2 hours, no driving around the block. It's a great feeling.