on the edge

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Greg Black

gjb at gbch dot net
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If you’re not living life on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.


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global defenders of human rights


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The FreeBSD Project

Thu, 01 Sep 2005

The ultimate parking champion

I think I may have just seen the ultimate parking performance at the Indooroopilly shopping centre. A big fat man in a big fat Ford with a big fat V8 engine was the star. He wanted to turn left into a slot which had a concrete pillar on the left side.

Although it was obvious to anybody with half a clue that he could only manage this by swinging out to the right side of the approach, he was determined to do it from the left lane.

The first five attempts involved turning part way in, scraping his left doors on the pillar and then reversing out—only to attempt it again from the exact same starting point.

Eventually, he ran out of patience—just like all the people who were waiting for him to get out of the way. When the car jammed against the pillar, he planted the throttle. Initially, this produced a lot of wheel spin and a huge cloud of smoke that almost obscured the sparks from his doors. Suddenly, the car got enough traction to drag itself around the pillar and took off.

The damage to the car next to his slot was substantial. The damage to the front of the late model Benz that he head butted was even more substantial. And the fat Ford looked rather the worse for wear.

Sadly, I’d used up all the spare time I had and could not wait around to watch the fun when our hero emerged from his car.