Alternate Side Parking Rules

New Yorkers have this funny little ritual that they go through several times a week if they own cars and it goes by Alternate Side Parking Rules, whereby for about an hour and a half two or three times a week, one of the sides of the street gets cleaned and must be cleared of traffic. Which means if, oh say, you've borrowed your sisters car for the week while she's studying in Italy so you can go to Costco and run other errands and drive out of the city on the weekend and generally just get a respite from public transportation, you can't just leave it on the street until you need it. No, you have to move it between the hours of 9:00 and 10:30 so that the Department of Sanitation can clean the street, which in my seven years in this city I may have seen happen once.

Anyway, I used to think this little annoyance was amusing and I got a cynical bout of schadenfreude every time I saw people double parked across the street waiting for the magical time when they can move their cars to the other side and leave them there for upwards of three whole days!

That is, I was amused until it happened to me. When I arrived on Sunday night I was determined to park on a side of the stree where I didn't have to move the car until at least Tuesday. This meant either parking on the other side of 96th St. (the horrors!) or trying to fit my sister's little Elantra in a small space between an Infiniti and a Pathfinder. SUVs are, of course, the bain of my existence but this one took the cake. I asked the boy to get out and see if I could fit. He said yes, which would have been the correct answer if the Pathfinder didn't have a spare tire the size of Minnesota sticking out the back. Bumper to bumper I was fine. But bumper to tire? Nope. The Elantra's hood was just two inches too high for that. I managed to wedge myself in, but by the time I realized I couldn't get the car closer than a foot and half to the curb, there was no going back.

I did manage to find a space this morning, however, after only 45 minutes. By the end of the week I'll be a pro. Just in time to return the car to Connecticut and go another seven years without ever having to pray for inclimate weather so I can hear those blessed words on the morning news: "Alternate side parking has been suspended city wide...."