On trucks in Berkeley (while I procrastinate writing and studying and banging my head against a wall)

I've borrowed my parents' truck for the week so I can use it to move out of Berkeley this weekend, which means that I either need to move the truck every two hours between 8AM and 7PM or suck it up and buy some temporary parking permits.

I am lazy and opted for the latter.

But moving the vehicle less frequently doesn't mean it isn't grabbing attention. I left this evening to return videos at Reel on my way to a study group, only to discover that the small American pickup truck had been wedged between two compact, hybrid vehicles. We're talking inches from each bumper.

I recognize these cars from the street for the last year and a half, so I know their owners live in the neighborhood. They have always parked as one should in a high demand/low supply parallel parking situation: all the way to the red zone at the end of a curb or before driveways, so the people in the middle can get in and out and there's room for more than two cars on any given section of street.

Now, I understand that Walnut Creek shoppers visiting our neighboring shopping district have no spatial awareness for such matters. They need and can afford three parking spaces for their hybrid Hummer and Whole Foods ego. Not to mention, who lives in Walnut Creek, anyway?

But these are my neighbors, who have empirically shown the utmost of courtesy to their fellow car parkers.

I strongly suspect, though I have absolutely no evidence to corroborate this, that they were pissed that--gasp--someone brought a TRUCK onto the street, and it stayed more than two hours!

Luckily, I was able to make a twelve hundred-point turn to get out of the space and bite my thumb at the conspiratorial first-generation Priuses, during the middle of which a passer-by pointed to the bed of the truck and said "you're leaking!" before he realized it was raining.