In Which We Are Still Not Annoyed

Yesterday morning Jer and I stopped by our favorite coffee shop in downtown Puyallup to grab a cup of coffee and some breakfast. We go there often enough that we're considered regulars; the owner greats us by name and gets our drinks started before we order our food.

While they've got great coffee there, this post is not about Central Perk, the aforementioned coffee shop. This post is about the public parking lot just down the street.

Now, Puyallup has a free public parking lot in the middle of their downtown area, which is fantastic. However, the handicap spot in the parking lot is a regular handicap spot and not a van spot. For those of you not familiar with the difference, a van spot has at least an eight foot "no parking zone" next to it. This allows enough room to deploy the ramp.

Our van has a bumper sticker on the window located on the ramp side of the vehicle that asks people not to park within eight feet. However, no one ever looks at this thing because invariably we'll get back to the car and even though the parking lot is half empty somebody has parked right next to us. Yesterday morning was no exception. Whenever this happens it means that Jeremy and Connor have to go back to the sidewalk (since Jer can't push Connor out of the way and push himself if a car is coming), and I have to get in the van and drive it to a different part of the lot that has two spaces open next to each other so that they have room to get in. Then after I park the car I have to get out and walk back to where they are waiting so that I can grab Connor.

It's completely understandable if the lot is full and there are no other spots for someone to park next to us. No big deal-- it only takes five minutes or so. But it does get a little frustrating when there are fifteen other spots open in the lot and we come back to discover someone has parked right next to us again. At least it was relatively nice outside yesterday. It's especially frustrating when it's 38 degrees outside and raining. So we decided we needed to come up with a solution to this problem.

First we discussed keeping a traffic cone in the trunk of the car and putting it in the space next to us when we parked. But people move cones out of the way or run over them all the time. Then we thought about training one of the cats to guard the spot. No dice-- people move them out of the road or run over them all the time too. Plus our cats wouldn't train too well-- Cricket is terrified of cars and Loki would probably try to get the car to pet him. So we scrapped that idea. Finally after much thought we hit on the perfect solution.

We'll use a duck.

Think about it-- who runs over ducks? No one, that's who. Ducks cross the road all the time, often at ridiculously slow paces, and nobody runs them over. People actually put up signs on the off chance that ducks might be crossing the road, so you know not to run them over. Who does that for cats? Also we could teach the duck to guard the car, which would deter would-be burglars quite handily. Those things can bite hard. No one would move the duck out of the way for the same reason. We'll just get it a Tupperware container full of water and keep it in the trunk.

And if we were trapped in the desert we could cook duck eggs on the hood of the van while we waited for help to arrive!

The only other animal that can sit in a road with impunity and not get run over that we could think of is a cow. But a cow, even a very small cow, would not fit well into our van with the wheelchairs loaded in. Cows would probably be better put to use guarding airplanes, a job which ducks cannot do. Ducks and airplane turbines do not get along too well, but you never hear about cows being sucked into those things, so they'd be perfect for the job.

Anyway, that's the plan. Shortly after we finish putting the finishing touches on our Wheelchair Defense System, we'll start work on our Duck Parking Guard!

I think it'll be a hit.

~Jess