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The sign said "Additional Parking on Other Side of Overpass" and I noticed it as I walked through the park-and-ride lot at Phibbs Exhchange in North Vancouver, a lot that I never park in because it's always full. I, along with many other commuters, park on a nearby residential street, and I'm sure this annoys the people who live there.
Change is difficult, but I was willing to try this new parking lot in order to not feel guilty when I parked, but when I drove by it a few days a few cars were parked there but I could see no way to enter the lot without driving the wrong way on a freeway exit lane. How stupid, I thought, to create a parking lot that only freeway drivers can get into, but my son, who I talked to a few days later, assured me that there was a way in and he told me to veer right, turn left, then turn right again and I'd get there but when I tried his route the next day I chickened out on the last right turn because I thought it was going to strand me on a lonely island between two lanes of zooming traffic.
I would have given up then, if my son hadn't loaned me Seth Grodin's audio book Small is the New Big (which has some interesting ideas in it but could have used a good editor), and I hadn't heard, a few mornings later as I drove out of my driveway, Seth urging me to "zoom," which is his term for "embracing change." At once I was infused with a resolve to push on with my quest for a new parking lot, so I steeled my nerves and, at the right moment, veered right, turned left, then turned right again and stopped to wait for a break in the traffic. The gleaming new parking lot with it's shiny white lines called out to me but someone at the district hall must have decided there was too much zooming going on—the yellow gates were closed and locked and I was, indeed, stranded on an island between two zooming lanes of traffic. Sigh.
Comments (3)
Comment Feedphibbs exchange
Patty O more than 13 years ago
Parking going the Wrong Way
Anonymous more than 13 years ago
Phibbs Exchange remains a
Robin more than 13 years ago