My first problem after entering the west side of campus was trying to comply with the Cosumnes River College (CRC) parking-permit requirement. I waited in a long line of vehicles to obtain the permit, but when I got the permit dispenser I could not figure out the proper process. I grew increasingly desperate as the line of impatient motorists behind me grew, so I finally threw my hands up in exasperation and drove over to the east side of campus, where I found a parking permit dispenser in a remote parking lot where I could carefully study the tutorial on the dispenser's screen in order to finally obtain the $2 daily parking permit.
Then there was the challenge of actually finding the theater. I have supreme confidence in my ability to find my way in any challenging geographic situation, no matter what. That meant that, yes, I was soon lost. Trusting Apple Maps on my trusty iPhone, I noted that they helpfully label the theater on their map of the CRC campus, but unfortunately their label is on the wrong building. After meeting another lost theater patron, and waving my wallet at a group of musical-theater enthusiasts singing a strange song about needing money (college campuses can be strange afterhours), we finally found the theater, ten minutes late, but fortunately curtain time was late too, so all was well.
After the show, I wandered back across the empty, confusing campus in search of my car in that remote eastern lot. Good, there it is! But as I got in and started driving away, in the remote distance, someone was waving a light on his phone, trying in a remote feeble way to flag me down. What kind of chaos is this? I worried because some of Sacramento's most-difficult gang territories aren't that far from the CRC campus, and I hadn't been in this neighborhood for years (not since working with the 2020 census, stumbling into yards labeled "beware of dog" and finding lonely Pitbulls needing company).
It was a black man in guerilla garb, age somewhat indeterminate, but maybe about 40. What did he need? He explained his predicament. He had been begging for money at a nearby stop sign for hours but had only collected $21. He was trying to travel to his father's house near the intersection of Elverta and Watt.
I pondered this request. He wanted to travel from Sacramento's far-southern suburbs, through the center of the sprawling city, to Sacramento's far-northern suburbs, starting this journey at 11 pm? This was the most-ridiculous story I had ever heard. No one does anything like this - without a car the challenges are simply too great - which meant that his story could only be true.
So I told him to jump in and keep his money. We had a cabbages-and-kings kind of conversation on the long drive and I was finally able to drop him off, coincidentally, not far from my friend Joe the Plumber's storage unit, which Joe secured in the most-inconvenient-possible location in the city for his purposes, for reasons that still elude me.
So, all was well, and disaster averted.
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