free parking

okay, so after watching more macgyver episodes in the last few days than i should admit to, i started thinking about what odd situations i've been in that i had to find creative solutions for.

one time i had to break into a parking lot to get a car. whose car? my friend's car. why did i have to break into a parking lot to get it? we were in fremont and parked the car at a 24 hour fitness before getting on the BART into san francisco. when we came back that night, we found that the parking lot had been emptied except for two cars, one of them being ours. why was the parking lot empty? because a construction crew had put up a chain link fence around it with the intention of resurfacing the parking lot the next day. there was a sign on the chain link fence warning people to get their cars out by midnight or they would be towed. we came at 3 am. well, they hadn't towed the car, but we still had the problem of getting to it.

i didn't want to call the construction company because it would probably just bring the tow truck driver and a $200 fee for getting the car back. we walked around the whole fence looking for a break in the links but found none. after walking the whole perimeter, we returned to what should have been the entrance and i happened to notice that at that segment in the fence, there was a part missing. all the other segments had these rectangle feet that served to hold up that particular section. at this segment, that foot was missing. i took a closer look and saw there was a metal piece, shaped like a figure eight, that connected the two segments together. i gave it a little yank and it moved! if i pulled it all the way off, i could open the segment like a door and we could drive our car out.

now that we had a way in, we had to have a quick plan. we'd probaby have a hard time explaining to a police officer why we were disassembling a fence on private property. the plan was this: i would open the fence while my friend quickly went in, started the car and drove it back to me. i would open the fence all the way while she drove it out, then i would close the fence back up, put the figure eight piece back, get in the car, and nobody would know we opened it up. sounds good right? we got as far as opening the fence and her driving out, but not before the security guard for the 24 hour fitness came by and saw i was waiting by the fence to close it up again. i didn't have to explain anything, he guessed pretty quickly that we had parked there for the BART and gotten stuck. he was pretty understanding and said just as long as we closed it back up, he didn't have a problem. so, out she came, i closed up the fence, and we went home.

i know, i didn't make any batteries or explosives or lockpicks, but i'm still satisfied at cheating the towing company out of $200. we cheated BART too. why did we park at 24 hour fitness in the first place? we didn't want to pay $1 for parking at the train station.