Not owning a car makes a lot of sense when living in downtown Toronto, but it does make for the occasional Very Interesting day. Yesterday was one of those. I had a car booked from 7:30am to 5pm, for a long list of errands, and it was raining. Variably – from unenthusiastic drizzle to the kind of downpour that soaks you to the skin in seconds. With occasional thunder & lightning accompaniment.
The first challenge was folding the back seats down for cargo. The car was one I’d never driven before, and the seat-folding design was, um, opaque. I peered, poked, prodded, pulled, and even looked in the trunk. The seats stayed up.
Finally, I resorted to reading the manual. I had been right to look in the trunk – but I’d missed the demure little levers tucked in in the corners.
The car pretty much made up for those shy levers with a heated steering wheel, a very enthusiastic bumwarmer, and a cup holder that actually fit my travel mug!
Then there was that bit of drama when I came out of Staples. The parking lot was nearly empty, and I’d parked the car in an empty row, all by its little grey self. And had a nasty shock when I came out and saw a big white scuff on the driver’s door. Looked like it had been doored! In an empty parking lot! Why the #$**!# would anyone park close enough to not leave room to open their door without hitting mine?
Checking it, I found a subtle 2cm square transparent sticker printed with a sad face and the words “damage reported” in a dark green that was almost invisible against the dark grey of the car. When I picked the car up, it was raining hard, and I figure that the scuff marks had faded when wet. The rain had apparently let up long enough for them to dry & come out of hiding.
That sticker was a huge relief! Reporting any damage, no matter how minor, is a royal pain and a time sink.
The rest of the day was a lot of driving, parking and dodging in & out of stores in various shades of wet.
Unloading at home was interesting – when I arrived there was NO parking available anywhere near, and, oddly enough, it was raining again. So, I pulled in across the street, illegally partly on the sidewalk, put on the four way flashers, and trotted back and forth from car to vestibule.
Three quarters of the way through the process, the skies opened, and it rained so hard that I was drenched in just one trip across the street. Then someone got in the car that was parked in front of my house and drove off. I GRABBED the parking space!
Another huge relief! I finished unloading and didn’t have to try to find parking so that I could go in, put the freezer & fridge shopping away and put on a dry jacket & scarf before returning the car. It’s a fifteen-minute walk back from the car’s official parking spot, and, even if I risked leaving the fridge&freezer stuff out, I didn’t want to make that walk wearing a cold & soggy scarf and jacket.
And the final minor drama of the day: when I got to the official parking spot, somebody had parked their huge SUV half-way into the space, despite the very clear signage that it’s a car share parking spot only. If I parked in the available half, the tail of my car would have blocked in the car on the parking pad next to it.
Le sigh. The procedure when this happens is to phone the car share office, give them the number of the offending vehicle, then find another parking spot and phone that in.
The office had picked up, and we’d started the process, when the driver & passengers of the SUV scurried up (it was, of course, raining), and drove off. Another huge relief!
Walked home, changed, and had tea. Putting the rest of the stuff away could wait til tomorrow.
