(post updated - Monday 7 Sept)
Parking at Stanley Park just wasn't lucky for me yesterday. I went to buy a parking permit (all day, mind you), and came back to find that my electronic lock system had frozen in the 'locked' position.... with the door OPEN. We tried a gazillion things (locking the car, unlocking the car, turning the car on, turning the car off, driving the car...) couldn't get it to unlock. We finally looped my belt around the door handle to give D. something to hold the door shut with, drove around for 15 minutes until we found a gas station, found a Saab place in the yellow pages, drove the 20 minutes to get the Saab place, and of course he was completely booked for days. But he came over to look at it, and presto, it unfroze. I'm definitely going back *there* if ever the need arises again. ;-)

When he poked it, a small plastic piece also fell to the ground. He said that it was just a guide piece and that the lock should be fine without it. Looking at where the similar piece is on the driver's door, I think the piece had partially broken and gotten in the way of the lock releasing. Either the driving or the poking or a combination was enough to let it break completely and fall out of the way.

So with most of the afternoon gone, we went back to the park, found a map at the Information Booth, and went off to explore some of the paths. Ninety minutes later, we come back to my car, and it has a ticket on the windshield. Did I forget to put my all-day parking permit back on the dash? No, turns out that I was in a poorly marked 15-minute parking zone. The very small '15-min parking' sign had been hidden by the van in front of me and the curb wasn't painted or marked in any fashion either. I've got some snaps of the situation and will submit them with an appeal requesting that it be turned into a warning. We'll see. What a day!

Update: we're back home and I've sent my appeal off. With the holiday, I'm hoping that I meet their deadline. What a mess. Of course, now that we're back, I find that their office was actually very convenient to stop by while we were in Vancouver, but I didn't take that opportunity. Rats.