Not that I’ve exactly ever been the world’s best parallel parker, but I’m not all that bad either. However, now that there are new laws on parking in my city, I may start “stressing out” as my husband so lovingly and encouragingly puts it. The new laws are only going to be effective over the weekend though which shouldn’t impact me too much as Daniel usually does the driving then. I try to avoid getting behind the wheel as much as possible so only drive to work and back and to collect the kids from preschool.
Still, when I heard about the Friday night-Saturday morning parking ban in the city I wasn’t exactly thrilled. If we want to go out on a Friday night that’s going to put a bit of a damper on things although Daniel says it’s really not such a big deal as he has always been a lucky parker. But if he does take his chances and mis-parks, he could risk being towed at a $135 fee ($70 towing fee, $35 impound fee and $30 ticket). Parking is now forbidden from 10:00pm Friday until 6:00am Saturday.
But then I was thinking anyway, I usually like to be in bed pretty early – even on the weekends – so we could for sure leave the city after an evening out by 10:00pm. We usually leave around 10:30pm, so pushing it back half an hour or so wouldn’t exactly spoil our plans (although Daniel always complains at how early we go home as it is).
Meanwhile, our great city has kindly put out a list of the venues people can park in the city, at no cost. These include the Hadlock Field parking lot, all of the Portland Public School lots (except Reiche School), Munjoy and Wilson Street parking lots; and more. Still, like I said, it hopefully won’t affect us too much as Daniel doesn’t stress about parking and this is only over part of the weekend when I rarely drive.
As my wise mother would say, “this should be our biggest problem.”