Picture me and my friend James hanging out on the sidewalk under an umbrella for 3 hours. You’ve now practically heard about the entire activity.
Thank goodness James (a friend from my last job) agreed to go to this with me. It was nice to have someone to keep me entertained in a sea of sitting around.
We got there, got cool t-shirts. An extremely nice woman (who made sure we always had water and snacks) told us to move this big umbrella – the one big thing we did all day, and it really only benefited us (’cause of the shade).
We were parking volunteers. We didn’t have to take any money or tell people where to park – that was the job of the parking attendants.
We were to tell people the Art Walk was about half a mile away, and they could take a shuttle which came every 10 minutes or so. If we had people who wanted to take the shuttle, we’d flag it down.
I didn’t realize that apparently almost the entire Art Walk crowd comes early. I guess that makes sense. If there’s a lot to see, you want to get there early. But I thought since it’s California and everyone’s always late, some people had to be trying to get in at the last minute, right?
Barely. Being in the final shift, we saw maybe 3 people going to Art Walk. None of them wanted the shuttle. (Good for them. It was heartening to see people willing to walk 1/2 a mile since that old saying – no one walks in California – holds oh so so much truth.)
So we sat and talked for three hours waiting to flag down a shuttle – which we never had to do.
The whole reason I picked this as an activity is because I wanted to see the Google building it was held in. But then I checked off parking as something I’d be willing to do! How silly was that?
Why would I check off something in the sun (thank goodness for that umbrella) – and most importantly where dogs abound!
I never think about vicinity to dogs until it’s too late. Tons of people were walking their dogs. Dogs were roaming freely – not on leashes(!) at the park right across the street from us. Aye, aye, aye.
I thought volunteering with parking would be sort of contained in a lot. Maybe I’d be directing cars, or telling people where to go when they got out. It didn’t dawn on me I’d be on the sidewalk out in the dog world!
I don’t know how long I have to live in this crazy town before I realize practically everyone here has dogs. Dogs are everywhere.
At least I learned through this experience that when given the option, I should never pick parking as my volunteer station… (and really I should probably never pick an outdoor option if an indoor option is available.)
Yay for learning!