The Adventures of a DC Commuter Continue

Ahhh it's been a while since I've been able to add another story to the series. It was bound to happen eventually though...

At my internship, because I'm technically a contractor, I'm not allowed to park on site. For the first few weeks of my internship, I bit the bullet and took public transportation, which I had been doing for the past year to get to school. The slight difference, however, was that it took me 45 extra minutes to get to my internship than it took me to get to school, making my grand total commuting time 1 hour and 15 minutes. Rockin.

Not only that, but I'm a 10 minute walk to the metro on my end (up hill on a path through some trees), followed by another 15 minute walk from the metro to work. Throw in the DC summertime humidity and a girl who needs to walk way too quickly because she's not a morning person and always late....and you've got a young professional who shows up to work entirely too winded and sweaty.

Then came the day when I was subbing on a softball team and a random temporary teammate told me that he used to work in the area of my internship. He gave me the sweet sweet tip that you can park on the roof of the CVS (which is right across from the metro) all day for free. This seemed too good to be true. I continued taking the metro for another week or so until one day I woke up entirely too late to make it on time if I were to metro. I decided that that was the day to live life on the edge and test out this sweet sweet tip.

I got to the CVS, and saw that on the lower level, there were signs that said "CVS parking only," "If towed call this number," and "Additional parking on top." I took my chances. I got up there and saw that neither of those first two signs were up there, and instead, there was only "No loitering." Well, I certainly wasn't going to be loitering...I was late! I had to get to work!

It was still risky, so I crossed my fingers the rest of the day (figuratively. Not literally. That would have made typing pretty difficult.) But low and behold, when I returned to my car, I had a car to return to. It had not been towed. This was a beautiful thing, and would make the commute a smidge better. And in DC, a smidge does wonders. I even figured out that if I walked the half mile to work on the other side of the street, I would be walking in the shade, which helped reduce the overheating.

Fast forward to today. The luck ran out. When I was walking down the ramp to begin my half mile walk to work this morning, a police officer passed me on the way up to the CVS rooftop lot. I should have known, but I didn't think twice about it. Sure enough, when I got back to my car this evening, I had a ticket waiting for me. Le sigh. Caught. Plan foiled. Extra half hour of sleep gone. I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!

The upside, though, is that the ticket is only $25. And it's a parking violation, which means no license points. Which means, I pretty much just paid for two months of parking for $25, and you can't get that *anywhere* in the city.

But alas, tomorrow I will be back to riding the train. The sweaty, sweaty train.