For a good time call...

You'll remember that we don't have a car. So, we've been walking everywhere we need to go, which has been great. The only struggle that we've had with this at all has been grocery shopping. When we first moved here, we would walk over to the store every few days, pick up those necessities that could be carried or packed up in the stroller and then walk home. Bringing home a particularly heavy load one time--testing both the shocks on the stroller and Jeff's own manliness (made worse by incredibly uneven sidewalks and a completely handicap-indifferent society)--coupled with a more difficult time of coordinating school schedules and nap schedules with shopping schedules, made us give in and decide that some things are definitely car-worthy.

So, yesterday, we hired a cab to bring us (and our significant haul) back to the apartment. That was funny enough in itself: the five of us plus a Costco-sized load of groceries in a little Fiat. But when we arrived at the apartment, it got really interesting. Jeff hopped out of the cab at the door to our building to tell the porter to open up the garage for us, which was done without delay. There is a pretty steep ramp, with a curve in it, going up into the garage, and just as we reached the curve, the car died and we began sliding down the ramp backwards, toward the street. The driver muttered something about gasoline as the car rolled to a stop, with the right side of the car flush up against the wall.

I'm not having fun at this point (in fact, I'm somewhat terrified), but when I look up, there is a car coming at us head-on down the single-lane ramp. As the driver tries to figure out what to do next, I grab the kids, jump out of the cab and hustle everyone to the safety of our apartment. That's where my first-hand account ends, but not the utter ridiculousness of the situation. So, somehow, the driver gets the car loose from the wall and continues his backward descent, only to get stuck again. Finally, he is able to get down to the street, leaving an acrid smell of burnt rubber in the air. He mentions gasoline again and Jeff is pretty sure the guy is about to take off with all our groceries, never to be seen again. Just then another car enters the garage, and, inspired, our faithful cab driver decides to give it another go. This time he manages to get his cab wedged at the top of the ramp, inside the curve. The driver who had just gone up comes over to see what in the world is going on and begins telling the cab driver what an idiot he is and instructing him on how to properly enter the garage. The cab driver then vacates his car and the other man gets in and gets the car up the ramp, delivering our grocery-filled cab to the elevator door and then going on his merry way! If that's not a good time, I don't know what is!