Rapacious parking lot bastards

The most expensive thing about a stay in hospital these days is not thr drugs or the bandages or the bed or the surgeon or the anaesthetic or the drips and tubes and things - it is the car parking fees.

During the day, the only sane place I have found to park at RPA is a gravel pit next to the maternity section. J mentions that she first went into RPA about 11 years ago, and the gravel pit was a dust bowl with a scattering of gravel over the top. It is still a dust bowl, but with a slightly thicker coating of gravel. I am glad I have the Disco, as it would be quite easy to get bogged, even in the dry season. I have never seen a sports car in there, as there is no way they would be able to cross the corrugations just beyond the entrance.

The sneaky bastards have laid tar from the entrance to just past the boom gate at the entry, so you think you are entering a smoothe, well surfaced car park. It is only after you have taken the ticket and gone beyond the boomgate and the gate has closed, thus denying a rapid exit in reverse, that you find that you are in fact parking in part of a tank driving school course. No kidding - the ruts look like a squadron of Abrahms and Leopards have been spending a few hours doing a waltz around the gravel. Speed limit signs are a waste of time, as no vehicle with low range gears can go that fast in low first.

The beauty of the car park is that no matter what you are visiting the hospital for, they will always sting you for more than an hour of parking. It's $5 an hour, but I bet very few people get out of the place in under 59 minutes.

For starters, it takes about 5 minutes to crawl from the gate to a parking spot in low gear, negotiating wadis and gravel dunes as you go. Then of course the car park is positioned about a suburb away from the rest of the hospital, so it takes about 15 minutes to walk to wherever you need to go. By the time you've done your business, made it back to the car park and then ground out of the place across a cratered moonscape, you've been there for 61 minutes, and the attendant is adamant that you owe him $10.

I'm sure that even if you got to the gate with 10 minutes to spare, he'd run away for 11 minutes just to take you over the magic hourly limit. After all, they need all the money they can get to..... pay for car park improvements?

Ha ha ha.

If I sent the little monkey down there with his beach bucket and plastic shovel, he could probably do more maintenance to the road surface in an afternoon than they have done in 10 years.

I wonder if they'll get upset if I turn up next time driving a road grader?