On Vacation

This week I am on vacation. I am so happy about this because I was getting to the point of desperately needing a change of scenery. We decided to head out of town for the desert for the weekend to get some sun and natural beauty. My good friend Hotwire found us a cheap deal on a hotel that looked decent, so we were feeling pretty good.

When we arrived at the hotel it seemed a bit dated in decor. But the room was clean, the bed was decent, and the staff was friendly so it wasn't bad. However, the parking situation was a bit bizarre. It involved parking in an adjoining parking garage that had several stories. The only way to get into the main parking areas was to enter the garage, make a sharp right turn, and then wind your way up this really narrow parking ramp that our small-mid size rental car could barely clear without scraping the walls.

I guess the garage was built when everyone drove a VW bug. Given that most people in the desert seem to prefer large SUVs and trucks, it seem like a bit of a mismatch. When you entered the garage there was a sign that stated that large trucks and vans should turn left and park on the ground floor.

So Saturday night we come in after dinner, coffee, and hanging out with a friend. As we enter the garage we are following a large Ford F-150 pickup truck. I figured it would hang a left, but no, it turned right and started towards the ramp. I gave them tons of room by hanging back, figuring they would simply see the tiny entrance to the ramp and reverse out of there. Wrong again. The truck tries to turn up the ramp and cannot swing wide enough to make the turn. Instead of stopping and backing out, the driver then tries to run the back wheels up onto the ramp and gets the left rear side of the truck stuck on the metal pylons. The roof of the cab got stuck again the low clearance roof in the front. It was a mess.

The occupants of said vehicle appeared to have had a lot to drink, so I assume our good friend alcohol contributed to the mess. They stood around, at a loss for what to do, and finally begun letting the air out of the tires. It looked like they were going to have several thousand dollars of body work damage when they finally got it out of there.

We reversed out and ended up parking in the large vehicle spots. A hotel maintenance guy had come out and told us to tell the front desk where we were parked due the the problem. The lady at the desk then informed us that we would get a ticket if we parked in the large vehicle spots and we need to move further into the garage. Our attempts to explain that a large truck was stuck and blocking the only entrance to the garage upper levels were meet with a confused stare. Finally, she told us we could just ignore the tow ticket that they would not tow us overnight. Um, okay.

The next morning the truck was removed from the ramp and nowhere in the lot. I guess they checked out early. More drama in the desert is still to come so stay tuned.