what the crack?
since i'm a downtown girl now, i have to park in a local parking structure, and so far it's been nothing but trouble. my pass to let me in and out of the structure hasn't been working, so there has been many a backing up and pulling into the lane with the attendant, accompanied by many a trip to the office to get things straightened out. as luck would have it, the pass actually worked yesterday (yay!) and i felt a sense of accomplishment as the little gate opened up to let me pass onto the ramp out. the design of this exiting area is really quite horrid as the path of the monthly-pass-holders (that's me) and the path of the everyone-elses converges immediately after the little booth onto one ramp to get to the street. as it turns out, there was a car in the everyone-else lane that was a little ahead of me, so i hung back a moment to let it get onto the ramp first.

and that's when it happened...

CRACK! the gate came crashing down onto my windshield. from where it hit, it's obvious that i was already well on my way out, so apparently they have no sensors to tell if i've completed that little passage or (very obviously) not. from where i was sitting, there was no way for me to get out and get the gate off my car, or re-swipe my pass or anything. instead, i looked back at the attendant for some sort of indication that she was going to hit the button to lift the gate and let me out. nope, nothin' doin'. her jolly clueless face shouted, "it's fine! just keep going!" seeing as i had no choice, i inched forward slowly, watching the thinly padded underside of the gate drag up my window and heard it scrape across my roof... great. i figured it would get stuck on my antennae, but i was wrong, it slid right down the back window... and got caught on my spoiler. the sound of something splintering made me slam on my breaks and wiggle out of the car. jolly-clueless girl was still encouraging me to keep going, while her co-hort was picking up the broken gate off my car. "don't worry! we've got a replacement! have a great night!" it was too dark for me to see what had happened to my car, but this morning showed clearly the path and final resting place of that gate through my super-white paint.

current mood: grr