Parking and walking, but at least the weather is nice...

[nwhiker]

So I didn't get a campus parking permit (also known as a campus parking hunting license) this quarter. At the guy at the parking office told me, haughtily, "You only have 35 credits, that's about as much as a Freshman at the end of winter quarter." Let's leave aside that those 35 credits are plenty for me to graduate with my MS, right? Now I've had fewer credits than that, and gotten a permit, so what changed, I asked? Nothing at ALL, they said. Nothing. You just flat out don't have enough credits. I remain skeptical that their main reason for this, "we opened permit applications a week earlier" is a sufficient explanation, since I went from getting that permit, to #721 on the waiting list.

So my only real parking options are:

1. Pay $10/DAY to park where I've been parking for the last years
2. Get a permit to a lot a few miles off campus, buy bus permit (grad students don't get one with enrollment if you aren't taking classes), and just deal with the extra hour this would add to my already 3 hour commute.

I found a bit of another option:

3. Park about a mile off campus, and walk.

This is fine now when the weather is nice, so it's what I'm doing. Since I'd always parked as far away as I could and taken a circuitous route to the biology dept to maximize the number of steps I was getting, the nice thing about this is that between that extra mile or so each way and my campus inefficient walk, I get 10000 steps before I'm back at the car

That said, when the weather turns crappy I'm not going to be as happy. That's when I'm guessing those $10 won't look as outrageous, especially only once a week, since I've been going on on Saturday, which has the triple benefit of quiet and solitude, not paying for parking, and being able to bring Perry home with me after his Saturday morning practice.

Comments

[arcanetrivia]

the nice thing about this is that between that extra mile or so each way and my campus inefficient walk, I get 10000 steps before I'm back at the car

How much is that in miles? At my pace length I make it about 4 miles, which is just... never gonna happen. (I ride my bike to work, weather permitting, but I ride straight into the back of my office and the most I ever typically walk in a workday is over to the cafeteria and back. If I decide to go off campus to the grocery store or sandwich shop for lunch the round trip is about a mile, but that's the upper limit.)

[nwhiker]

That is about 4 miles at my pace too, give or take depending on what type of terrain I'm walking over.

I have to say... when I was riding my bike... I got fewer steps! It just all works out in the end, right? Your bike-work situation sounds wonderful, though!