watching le tour online

thanks goodness for versus, although i preferred their previous name, outdoor life network, but nonetheless one can watch the entire tour online. today was a one of many delights, as the tour passed thru leysin, switzerland, a town where i worked one fall/winter/spring at the hiking sheep guesthouse. now that the tour is in the Alps, it should be more exciting. but in the meantime, we've had contador take an early spring and leave lance behind, levi break a wrist on a sad day, hincapie robbed of a yellow day, cancellara lead for a solid week, thor and cavendish battle in the sprints, and a sweet solo by haussler. it's now been 10 years since i went to le tour live...might have to rally next year.

this is why i should stay on a bike

a friend from class calls last night...newly back in town, bored, will i grab a bite with him. sure! a neighbor runs a new restaurant and business is slow in summer but they have awesome seafood and music on the patio so we go there. i've already biked home for the day when i get the call so i pop back into town in the car since its so dead in town during summer and there's plenty of parking. i pull up and they arent featuring valet parking, as they usually do, b/c well, its dead. i scout the patio, it has a handful of folks sitting outside and about 4 cars out front in a lot that says dont park here. mind you, its the lot attached to the restaurant and the logical place to park, but it's owned by the evil PRESTIGE PARKING, as is every other slab of asphalt in town, and although no one is using it or ever does, one cannot park there. but the restaurant is on the edge of town and not in the center of beaucoups parking and honestly i'm not really giving it that much thought at the time, i just see 4-5 folks are parked there, at the restaurant, and no cars in site anywhere else. so i pull in and park.
i meet my friend, have a delish plate of bocorones, seared ahi, and oysters rockefeller sloshed down with a cucumber & ginger martini. refreshing summer fare. we finish up at the bar chatting with the owners and having a fine evening for a wednesday in athens in the dead of summer. then we walk out to the lot and it all changes.
there it is, the dreaded ugly boot on my front wheel with a cheesy NOTE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS about not attempting to move this vehicle and who to call to get the boot off. let me just say, i have never been booted ever, i feed parking meters, park legit, and follow the rules, usually. but more importantly, i rarely ever have to b/c i bike everywhere. i even receive 24 free deck parking days in winter from the university for being a member of the alternative transit program. but i digress.
so my friend waits while i call the number of the note which only makes the evening worse. matt, the dick, answers the phone, "yea", and proceeds to treat me with such beligerence that i in turn ask him ridiculous questions that i dont really wanna know the answer to, but i just feel the need to try to stump him b/c he's so nasty. so i ask like 5 times, who owns this lot, who am i paying $50 bucks to at midnight in a dark parking lot? who do you work for, what's your name? what do you mean you dont legally have to tell me? idiot. i'm difficult, he's annoyed, although paid to 'handle these things so the owner doesnt have to' so he offers to have the police meet him there when he comes to collect the cash from me in the money making scheme and i say, 'indeed i would like that'. i guess he assumed a patron exiting a bar at midnight might not want to see the poilce but i was in fine form and sober, so i insisted.
when matt arrived, petite blonde mariah, the real employee of PP, per her business card, jumped out of the vehicle to greet the police and thank them for their time and bothering to waste it on such a situation, to which they promptly responded that the town was indeed dead and nothing was going on. my original point exactly. certainly i wouldnt want to detain police from solving real city problems. so my real beef here, is PRESTIGE PARKING. sure i saw the sign that they own the lot and no one can park there ever, 24/7, 365, but of course its wide open for you to do so and the 47 folks who were downtown last night didn't pay them a dime to park b/c there was so much available. and of course paying an attendant to staff a lot with a uniform and sign to collect $5 per car would be too much trouble for a slow sultry summer evening. aha! but cruising by a lot that you can get $50 a pop if anyone uses ever is a much better return on your evening.
so part of me thinks, hey karma, what gives? i know it doesnt work this way but i still find myself questioning it. i play by the rules, i'm out befriending a lonely friend, showing patronage to a local business and neighbor and it costs me an extra $50 bucks! but a bigger part of me wonders, hey mariah, cant you find another job and partner, you seem nice enough, but this is your life's work? ugh, and that matt guy? surely you can do better.