SeeingEyeBlog

Takes a lot of willpower.

Luckily my roommate got home before the Villaraigosites found my ill-parked Jeep (a fire hydrant ticket in LA is a week’s pay). Together, we decided to parallel park the impotent beast between two other cars.

My advice when parallel parking is to make sure your engine works. As it was, we had to attempt the stunt three times, and had to do the back-n-forth maneuver once roughly in place. Doing the back-n-forth maneuver without power steering or a gas pedal is not recommended unless you’re using the exercise to build muscle tone. Of course, there are other ways to build muscle tone.

The unfortunate part about this parking situation is, it’s a Monday morning street cleaning zone. So I have another Villaraigosite onslaught coming at 8am tomorrow. I will need to do a 3-point turn and re-parallel park tomorrow morning.

What is it with me and my Jeep, that we constantly end up without a spark in the engine. Not a week prior, it drove flawlessly for two miles to the store, and then after 15 minutes of sitting, it couldn’t be aroused. And again tonight, on my way to work, it can’t get it up again.

This time I was filling up with gas at a station a half-mile from my house. I couldn’t believe it was happening again. Jeep Grand Cherokees must need viagra after 10 years of service, because this hunk of metal can’t get it up reliably. It’s so bad that I’ve started driving around constantly with my bike in the back, just in case this type of crap happens again. Sure enough, I was right.

I tried hooking up my portable jump-start battery to see if I could get her started, but it still wouldn’t even try to turn over. It was exactly the same symptoms as last time, when I thought it was my alarm system. What am I supposed to do a half mile away from home sitting next to a gas pump?

Well, the ground is level, no hills, so I decide to go for it. I usually expect the unexpected, like the time I didn’t have a ride home from Burbank airport, and no cash on me. I decided to walk 20 miles to West LA.

I can honestly say that it was one of the largest oxygen debts my body has incurred, as I pushed my heavy SUV a half mile back to my house. These vehicles are light enough that you get excited about actually being able to move it at all. Yet they are so heavy that you can’t generate hardly any speed with one person’s torque.

My greatest fear at this point is the Los Angeles parking enforcement, those mindless Villaraigosite zombies that would take candy from a baby. There was nowhere to park once I got to my street, so I had to set her down next to a fire hydrant.

My feelings right now can be summed up by Michael Drayton beautifully at the end of the 11th Sonnet of Idea:

You do bewitch me ; O, that I could fly,
From my self you, or from your own self I !

And also, for some reason, Ringo Starr’s Don’t Pass Me By was echoing in my head the whole time I was pushing the fat tub back to port.