On the way back from the Holidazzle parade got this shot of the elevator area on level E in the Macy’s parking ramp, a convenient parking spot in downtown Minneapolis. Once we got into the van we backed out of our parking spot and promptly went nowhere. I could quickly see this was going to be long wait. Convinced the wife that I’ll be back in time, got out of the van, down the elevator, and started wandering around downtown camera in hand.

Periodic cell phone check-ins, 45 minutes later, I met up with the crew as they were exiting the parking ramp at street level. My wife told me about how they waited forever in the same spot we’d pulled out of, even though you could see the traffic move down the spiral, and in fact the spiral emptied out while they were still waiting, and waiting, and waiting. How can that be? Had my suspicion but it became crystal clear after I went back to Macys by myself for some photos of the 8th floor Christmas display.

You see there are actually two spirals connecting all the parking levels. The spirals are concentric but offset one level, sorta like two corkscrews intertwined. The reason this is done is because if a single spiral were to connect all levels, it would have to be too steep between subsequent levels. So you end up having spiral one and spiral two, with spiral one connecting to levels A, C, E, .., and spiral two connecting to levels B, D, F, … So why would this make a difference? Well, when you get to street level, there are 3 pay booths. How do you split 3 pay booths between 2 lanes? You don’t. One of the spirals forks into 2 lanes, the other doesn’t. So the spiral with the 2 booths, and all parking levels that feed into it, empties twice as fast as the other. We know this for a fact because my wife’s cousin ended up in the ‘fast’ spiral, and was halfway to New Brighton before we even left the parking ramp. Normally this wouldn’t make a difference, except when essentially everyone is leaving the parking ramp at the same time, such after a major downtown event.

So the mission (for anyone) is to figure which are the ‘fast’ and which are the ’slow’ parking levels. Please post your findings.

Another Christmas down. Visited brother in law in the country side. Three dogs (no Bailey though, in doggy heaven now :( we miss you), 3 kids, 2 teens, 12 adults. By the time all the presents were opened, the living room looked as busy as this photo.

Tried trotting into the back woods thinking I’d get some interesting shots, but the snow was too (ha, notice I caught this one, 2 Os, I am self trainable after all) deep which normally wouldn’t be a problem if I’d dressed right. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before the snow would work its way up into the jean legs and then start packing into the top of my shoes, with cold wet feet to follow.

This photo was taken at Macy’s too. Pretty chaotic but I like the colors.