Stupid Parking Tricks
August 18, 2005
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Posted by Aubrey Turner
On a few occasions lately I’ve noticed people without handicap permits parking in the reserved spots or even in the hashed “no parking” areas right next to them at the park. Considering that I’ve seen these people out and about on the trail, it seems odd to me that they’d be worried about parking an extra fifty feet from the trail entrance if they’re about to walk two or three miles. But I suspect this doesn’t register in their minds.
To get an idea of the scale of the folly, consider this map of the area. The parking lot is on the southwest corner of the Bear Creek and Rufe Snow intersection (right across from where Pate Orr dead-ends). The trail winds around and goes under Rufe Snow and ends up over at Keller Smithfield road (for now; they’re in the process of extending it from there). The distance from the farthest point in the parking lot to the entrance is less than the distance you walk from the entrance of the trail to the end of the first bridge (that brown-looking structure just to the left and below the parking lot; it crosses the creekbed, which was pretty dry when the picture was taken).
Categories: Random Ramblings
Of course, if the purpose of the parking lot is to give people access to the parks and trail, one could wonder why it needs handicapped spaces at all. Anyone fit enough to consider using the park (even if by wheelchair) shouldn’t find the extra fifty feet that much of a problem.
Or are there facilities close to the handicapped parking spots that aren’t readily visible in the photo?
There’s a little set of bleachers (only about 3 or 4 feet tall, two or three rows deep) right next to the entrance (under the tree that appears as a dot with a shadow in the picture). I’m not sure what they’re for, since there’s not really any kind of area there for games.
The only other think I can think of is that this parking lot sometimes serves as overflow parking when they have events at Bear Creek Intermediate School, which is to the Northwest of the parking lot (the horseshoe drive in the picture is the front entrance to the school).
I hve a friend who kissed his legs bye-bye while on a Gov’t. funded outing in the sunny Mekong Delta in the early 70’s. He has a lift equipped van so he can haul his electric wheelchair around. He also owns a spiffy little plumber’s basin wrench with a business end that strongly resembles a mini dinosaur jaw.
Whenever he encounters someone parked in a handicap parking zone without reason to be there,(You’d be amazed how often this happens, and the lame excuses for it.) he simply applies said basin wrench to the valve stems of two or three wheels and pops ‘em right out. If the spare’s handy he likes to get that one, too.
Then and only then he calls the police on his cell phone. The results can be gloriously amusing.