Last weekend I attended a conference in the D.C. area where I stayed
at a hotel with a basement parking garage. Since this was the only
parking the hotel offered free, I very slowly and carefully pulled the
van ('87 Westy) up to the overhead yellow barrier indicating the
amount of clearance required to park in the garage. I jumped out and
inspected the situation and ascertained that I had about 4 inches to
spare to get under the bar.

Well, call me naive, but I said "OK - go for it". I rolled under the
barrier AOK, then proceeded (very slowly) down the entrance ramp and
made a right-hand turn into the garage proper. As I was approaching
the ticket-dispensing machine it happened - scraping sounds from the
roof area!

Oh dear. I immediately stopped and inspected the situation; the garage
ceiling was smooth so the distance btw. the ceiling and floor was
obviously narrowing. Well I wasn't wedged in (if I had been it would
have been let-some-air-out-of-the-tires-time), so I began the process
of reversing out of the garage. And that was a very tedious,
nerve-racking experience which wasn't helped much by the fact that
there were 2 cars behind me that had to reverse out as well!

No real damage was done to the van, so there's a happy ending to this
tale.

Moral of the story? Don't blindly trust those height barriers at
parking garages!

dan
-- 
Dan Resler

Dept. of Mathematical Sciences            
Virginia Commonwealth University           
Richmond, VA                                    
23284-2014 USA
email: resler@liberty.mas.vcu.edu