It has been 3months and one day since I have left Grand Rapids Michigan. After driving to the lower parts of Florida on a 50cc scooter, I tell my self I never want to drive a car again. I have been in Boston for about two months now, I have ridden in cars with others driving and doing so my fear of big city driving has grown. Cars go winging by you, turning in front of you, you in front of them, traffic signals ignored and there is just about always a car wreck to be seen on every drive.

For a while now I had been watching my aunt's apartment on the south end of Boston she was nice enough to leave me with her car. I had no plans on driving it but only to move it when that day comes for street cleaning, it would suck to explain to my aunt why her car got towed if I did not move it. My plan was to flip a U'ey from the space that she had parked it and turn down this side street that always has parking, plans never go as they are planed.

I enter the car, in my head I had already worked my self up for the worst, because that (insert sarcastic tone here) always helps. start the car put the seat belt on and put it in reverse. As I do this I notice a line of cars forming behind me. The first one puts his turn signal on (he wants my spot). As traffic is coming from the other direction filling up a once cleared road I realize a u turn is not going to work here any more. The man behind me starts laying on his horn only building my anxiety of driving. So I put the car in gear and start driving down the road looking for a good road to turn down. At the first stop light I realize that now is a good time to take off the parking break.

Ok lets pause for a moment for those of you who are not from Boston and have never driven here should know that the roads are not like normal city roads. They are not set up in grid patterns they weave, they wind, intersections are not always 4 way some times they are 5 or 6 way and to travel north you need to go south first and to get to the south end of Boston you need one of those star trek "beam me up things".

So as I am driving I turn down one road that puts me to another one way road that puts me on some windy road. I stop for a moment on the side of the road and think (ok now how do i get back). I pass a few cops and my thoughts start to run, do they know I don't like them, do they know that I am an uninsured driver, do they know this is my first time driving in this city and did they know this is not my car. some how out of the blue I ended up on the street that I started on, going the direction that I wanted to go in the first place.

I see it, the road I want to park down, but wait there off in the distance sparkling like a diamond on the queens crown is one beautiful parking space right across the street from the building I'm in. Let me tell you parallel parking was never so easy as this one. Its as if someone wrote on the road "please leave a spot here for 30 tanker trucks to fit because some retard out of town guy will need this spot... thank you and welcome to Boston."

a view from the roof top