The Great Wide Open Spaces

View of the parking garage from Mark's doctor's office

I took Mark downtown for a doctor's appointment yesterday. His appointment was for 10:40 in the morning. At 9:20 Mark started screaming from the living room, "Are you ready to go?" No, I was not ready to leave for downtown, a twenty minute ride from our house. So after a few minutes of back and forth (also called arguing) we went out to the car and left for the doctor's office. Twenty minutes later we arrived.

"Lots of time before your appointment, Mark."

"Drive around the block and see if you can find a free parking spot."

So I obliged Mark and made my way around the block. Driving around the block in Downtown Chicago involved four left turns, each one blocked by a never ending parade of pedestrians. Ten minutes later it was determined that there were no free spaces.

"Go ahead and park in the garage. I'll pay."

Magic words, so I did a quick right turn into the hospital parking garage where I was greeted by a sign that told me, "Parking $23". But Mark was paying.

The Northwestern Hospital parking garage is like many that I have been in. It is a serpentine series of ramps with diagonal parking on either side. You just keep going on up until you find an open space. Easy enough... for me. Not for the giant assholes that were in front of us. Giant, smelly, ignorant, assholes. Here is a tip for the morons who have never encountered a parking garage before, do not sit and wait for that person you saw get in their car to leave. Because while you sit there in your entitled glory, fifty cars have backed up behind you. Up ahead there are plenty of empty parking spaces, but the idiots can't figure that out. I could even see empty spaces over on the down ramp, if only the assholes would get the hell out of my way. So it took me over twenty minutes inching up that ramp to get to a parking space, right next to the elevator I might add. And as Mark and I made our way up to the eighteenth floor to see his doctor, Mark looked at his watch and said, "Whew, we just made it on time."