Great start to the weekend
I was about an hour early for my flight on Friday afternoon, on the phone with baltassoc, when I pulled up to the Hobby long term parking garage. There was an Hummer H2 in front of me, getting his little ticket thingie and waiting for the arm to go up. He pulled up a little, and he banged the top of his car on the sign that said "'7 feet". Manly Hummer Man *pshawed* and kept on driving. I pulled up to get my ticket.
A parking attendant guy came racing towards the ramp, and he asked me if the Hummer had really banged the sign. "Yeah. Is he going to get stuck?" "Oh, yeah." He raced up the ramp on foot, and I followed up the corkscrew just in time to find the Hummer trying to ram its way through a particularly low patch of the parking garage ramp. Manly Hummer Man backed up a little, revved the engine, and forced his way through. Sparks flew. I think this is when he realized that he may have just done something extraordinarily stupid, because he pulled off at the first floor and then just stopped when he saw how low the ceiling for the entire floor was.
At this point, I'm laughing hysterically, I'm explaining what's going on to baltassoc, and I feel the need to follow the guy to see what happens next. If worse comes to worse, I can back up and go up to the next floor. Parking attendant dude is arguing with Manly Hummer Man. Manly Hummer Man has the balls to argue back with parking attendant dude, and I'm just dying laughing. baltassoc's beginning to worry that I'm going to get stuck behind the Hummer for quite awhile, and that my being an hour early under this particular circumstance isn't early enough. After a few minutes, I'm beginning to agree, and I back up, jump a barrier and go around the Hummer. Parking attendant guy waves me past.
Manly Hummer Man was still stuck by the time I managed to find a place to park (the parking gods were kinder than they've ever been to me in my entire airport parking life), find all the crap floating around my car that I needed to take with me, figure out how to turn three bags into two bags and lock the car.
Manly Hummer Man's Hummer was gone when I left the airport this morning, so I assume that the jaws of life showed up at some point. Or someone let the air out of the tires.
Of course, that wasn't the highlight of my weekend. My weekend didn't really have a single highlight. Lots and lots of highlights. It was sort of cloudy and overcast in Chicago this weekend, but we took advantage of the awesome, awesome view on the top of baltassoc's building, he took me to three great restaurants, he cooked for me twice, we spent a couple of hours going through a used bookstore in Wicker Park, we spent a few hours at the Art Institute for the Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre exhibition and have vowed to return for a more thorough inspection of the rest of the museum at a later date, we walked through Andersonville a bit, we went grocery shopping and drove around Chicago a bit, and we had a really, really nice weekend pretty much joined at the hip.
I'm really happy right now, though it makes me a little sad that it'll be about a month before I see him again. I promise that the next time I'm in Chicago (scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 30), I'll seek out other Chicago folk, at the least so you can meet him.
A parking attendant guy came racing towards the ramp, and he asked me if the Hummer had really banged the sign. "Yeah. Is he going to get stuck?" "Oh, yeah." He raced up the ramp on foot, and I followed up the corkscrew just in time to find the Hummer trying to ram its way through a particularly low patch of the parking garage ramp. Manly Hummer Man backed up a little, revved the engine, and forced his way through. Sparks flew. I think this is when he realized that he may have just done something extraordinarily stupid, because he pulled off at the first floor and then just stopped when he saw how low the ceiling for the entire floor was.
At this point, I'm laughing hysterically, I'm explaining what's going on to baltassoc, and I feel the need to follow the guy to see what happens next. If worse comes to worse, I can back up and go up to the next floor. Parking attendant dude is arguing with Manly Hummer Man. Manly Hummer Man has the balls to argue back with parking attendant dude, and I'm just dying laughing. baltassoc's beginning to worry that I'm going to get stuck behind the Hummer for quite awhile, and that my being an hour early under this particular circumstance isn't early enough. After a few minutes, I'm beginning to agree, and I back up, jump a barrier and go around the Hummer. Parking attendant guy waves me past.
Manly Hummer Man was still stuck by the time I managed to find a place to park (the parking gods were kinder than they've ever been to me in my entire airport parking life), find all the crap floating around my car that I needed to take with me, figure out how to turn three bags into two bags and lock the car.
Manly Hummer Man's Hummer was gone when I left the airport this morning, so I assume that the jaws of life showed up at some point. Or someone let the air out of the tires.
Of course, that wasn't the highlight of my weekend. My weekend didn't really have a single highlight. Lots and lots of highlights. It was sort of cloudy and overcast in Chicago this weekend, but we took advantage of the awesome, awesome view on the top of baltassoc's building, he took me to three great restaurants, he cooked for me twice, we spent a couple of hours going through a used bookstore in Wicker Park, we spent a few hours at the Art Institute for the Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre exhibition and have vowed to return for a more thorough inspection of the rest of the museum at a later date, we walked through Andersonville a bit, we went grocery shopping and drove around Chicago a bit, and we had a really, really nice weekend pretty much joined at the hip.
I'm really happy right now, though it makes me a little sad that it'll be about a month before I see him again. I promise that the next time I'm in Chicago (scheduled for the weekend of Sept. 30), I'll seek out other Chicago folk, at the least so you can meet him.