Parking Lot Non-Scale Victory

Los Angeles is known for having horrible traffic and crazy drivers, and it’s a well-earned reputation. But here’s a little-known Los Angeles fact: It’s not just on the road that drivers in Los Angeles behave rudely and aggressively – it’s in the parking lots as well. People don’t know how to park around here.

California is a progressive and environmentally-aware state, and there have been initiatives to encourage people to drive less and drive smaller, more efficient cars. The smog laws are the most strict in the country. There are a lot of carpool lanes. When GM started manufacturing the EV1 electric car in the late ’90s, Los Angeles built charging stations all over the place, and gave them the best parking spots, right next to the handicap spots (although the charging stations are long gone, some of the signage pointing the way remains).

Then there’s the compact car parking spot. These spots are shorter and narrower than regular parking spots, and their smaller size allows for more cars to fit into a lot where land is at a premium, and, in more spacious venues, it subtly encourages compact car usage, as compact spaces are often closer.

When I’m making my way through a parking lot with lots of available spaces, I often have a laugh noting other drivers’ definition of ‘compact.’ It befuddles me that there are people who consider their giant SUV, dual cab pick-up or boat-sized sedan to be a compact car. But when I’m in a parking lot that’s nearly full, there’s no laughter. I get so annoyed when an oversized car is in a compact spot, because half the time, they encroach so much on the spots next to them, that they can’t be used at all. One dumbfuck illiterate driver can take up threeparking spots. It just ain’t right.

Worse yet are the times when I park my Ford Focus in a compact spot, next to another compact car, but when I return, that neighboring car is gone, and some tank is in its place. Sometimes, that car is precariously close to mine. Last May, I wrote a post about having to climb through my car, from the passenger side, because there was no room on the driver’s side. Click here to check it out – it’s a good read about a weight loss perk that I hadn’t even considered until I benefited from it.

The other day, the aforementioned scenario happened again. After Tavi brought me to my first-ever yoga class, we headed down the street and grabbed a post-workout snack at Jamba Juice (a 230-calorie berry-and-beet smoothie and a wheatgrass shot). When we returned to my car, another car had parked pretty damn close. It wasn’t close enough to warrant me climbing through from the passenger’s side, but getting into the driver’s seat without banging the door against the neighboring car would require some careful slinking and slithering on my part.

It looked much tighter in real life than it does in that photo!

Since Tavi was with me, I had him photograph my entry, because I knew this was something that I wouldn’t have been able to pull off when I was heavier.

Approaching the car. Have you ever read about how some animals, like rats and octopi, can fit their entire bodies through a hole no bigger than a quarter? That's what this feels like.

Right foot in. Turning sideways because my hips won't fit any other way.

Sliding forward, so both hips are inside the doorway, which will eventually allow me to start sitting.

Smile for the camera!

Starting to sit. My hand has to hold the door in place, so my left knee doesn't push it into the other car. I'm turning my head, so it clears the opening between the car door and the roof.

Once my head clears the roof, I can pivot, still holding onto the door, and start to bring my left leg inside the car.

I'M IN!

The entire process took 12-13 minutes.

Kidding. The entire process took a matter of seconds. Once I was in, I actually got out (the same process, reversed) and did it again, to make sure that Tavi got all the photos. Yep, those are the lengths I’ll go to for the sake of a good blog post. Or this blog post.

It’s accomplishments like this one, that, in the grand scheme of things, are relatively minor parts of my day and my life, that often excite me the most. They show that the changes I’ve made are trickling down and affecting me in ways I can’t predict or anticipate. They show that every single moment – not just when I leave the gym or step on the scale – has been bettered by my weight loss. Best of all, they remind me, often at times when my weight is the last thing on my mind, of the magnitude of my accomplishments. Hell yeah, that deserves a…

…KEEP IT UP, DAVID!

Parking Garage NSV

For anyone that’s unfamiliar, NSV stands for Non-Scale Victory.  The number on the scale is the most common way people recognize and quantify their weight loss, but a Non-Scale Victory can be anything else.  Although I haven’t labeled them as such, I’ve blogged about lots of things I can do now that I wasn’t able to do when I was at my heaviest – whether it’s ride roller coasters, sit in an airplane seat without a seat-belt extender, or said good-bye forever to my former favorite big & tall store because I no longer needed to shop there.  In fact, I’ve done a whole series of posts about fitting into smaller sizes of clothes (which you can see in my My Favorite Posts section of the blog) – and all of these things are Non-Scale Victories.

Twice in the past two weeks, I’ve experienced a new kind of Non-Scale Victory in the parking garage at work.  This parking garage has two types of spots: regular spots and compact spots.  I drive a Ford Focus, which is a smaller car, so most of the time, I park in one of the compact spots:

Every so often, some dummy parks their SUV or yacht-sized sedan in the compact spot next to mine, leaving hardly any space for me to open my car door to get in.  Twice, in the past two weeks, I’ve had to go around and enter my car through the passenger door, and climb through my car to get into the driver’s seat.

When I was heavier, doing that was awful.  Terrible.  When you’re 400 pounds, it’s a tight fit in most cars, including my Focus, and negotiating myself into the driver’s seat via the passenger seat wasn’t easy.  Some part of me was always pressed up against the steering wheel, or there wouldn’t be quite enough room to get a leg over the center console because my belly would be in the way.  I remember one time when I managed to get myself into the driver’s seat relatively quickly, only to realize my right leg was tucked up under me, and there just wasn’t the room to swing it out from under my butt so it could go where it needed to go – you know, to operate the pedals.  So I had to shimmy back into the passenger’s seat and basically start over.

It’s been a while since I’ve had to climb through my car, so when I was forced to climb through it two weeks ago, these memories came back, and I started dreading it.  It didn’t really click in my mind that it might be different now that I was 164 pounds lighter.  I may have even groaned.  Audibly.  And then I opened the passenger door, climbed in, and I’m not exactly sure what happened, but about five seconds later, I was in my driver’s seat.  Five seconds later.  Did that really just happen?  It was so easy, so effortless.  I didn’t feel like a contortionist trying to squeeze their way into a suitcase.

Then, when it happened again a couple nights ago, a smile crept across my face, and I actually thought: this is gonna be fun!  And you know what?  It was.

Doing things that I struggled to be able to do before is most definitely fun.  And being able to easily climb through my car is most definitely a Non-Scale Victory.

What’s Your Most Recent Non-Scale Victory?  Share in the comments section!

One more picture before I go:

Look!  The parking spot with the same number as the amount of weight that I’ve lost!

I wish everyone a fantastic long holiday weekend.  I planning on posting something at some point over the weekend, and you should definitely come back on Tuesday, because I have something really fun and special planned!  Don’t miss it!

Keep it up, David!