The Montifiore Manse

Pre-Wedding Parking Difficulties in Manhattan

After a busy few weeks, I finally made it to posting a bit. The following post is a photo recorder of a little unexpected adventure I, Todd Munson (one of the groomsmen), and my sister Tristan had two days before the wedding. My sister Tristan and I drove into New York to pick up Todd from the airport. From the airport, we decided to head into Manhattan for a few hours. The few hours were extended due to some car problems.

Seeing as finding parking was difficult, to say nothing of trying to drive in downtown Manhattan at rush hour, we decided to spend some extra money and park in a parking garage. Note in the above photo how low the clearance down into the parking ramp is. This will become significant later.

After a few hours' whirlwind tour of Manhattan, we returned to the parking garage a little late. Upon arriving, we found that the car would not start. I was told a special trick to get it to start, but no matter what I did the car would not start. So I started making phone calls.

After receiving some more advice, and a couple variations on the trick to start the car, we gave it several more tries. We tried moving the car to level ground. We tried pumping the gas a lot more. We prayed the whole time.

Here we are calling for reinforcements. Martha's brother Pete and sister Joanna were on their way with the promise of help from AAA (Triple A).

Hours went by as Pete and Jo were caught in traffic. Eventually, Pete and Jo arrived but more waiting was ahead. We called AAA on hourly intervals as the truck they said would be there in the next half-hour or so never came. Eventually, the tow truck finally came at around midnight. We had been trying to start the car, get help, and have the car towed since 4pm.

Once the truck finally arrived we rejoiced greatly, but there was a problem. There was no way for the tow truck to get to the car. We were again discouraged. However, an idea was put forth in hope: we could use Pete and Jo's car to push our car up the ramp to the tow truck! The idea was our last chance, so we gave it a shot.

We pushed the car that would not start into position at the bottom of the ramp. Todd was designated pilot for the ride back up the ramp. Pete and Jo's car drove down the ramp and took position behind our car to push it up and out.

Up we go!

Once at the top, Todd hit the brakes and kept the car from heading straight out into the late-night traffic. Also, note the stack of card board boxes acting as a pad to keep the cars from being damaged.