DC Cop, I apologize for giving you a heart attack...

When I was up in DC, I rented a car. I figured I'd be able to take in some of the sights in the few hours I had between when I flew in to Reagan National and when I had to drive up to Greenbelt. So I was driving down Pennsylvania Ave to get to the capital building. As I approached, I crossed a street at a traffic light, and entered what I thought was a parking lot. It looked like a parking lot - it had what looked like to "aisles" running lengthwise and what appeared to be diagonal parking spaces painted on the concrete. But I noticed that something was wrong - the diagonal spots were all facing the wrong direction! Every time I've ever driven in a parking lot, I've seen the parking spaces arranged so that you can pull right in head-first. But these all looked like they were going the wrong direction. Naturally, since there were no arrows painted on the ground or anything telling me that I am indeed in the correct lane, I figured that I had made a mistake, and so I carefully crossed over two parking spots, and got into the other aisle. That's when a policeman on a bicycle starts riding towards me waving his arms frantically. I pull over into one of the spots, and he says to me "What do you think you're doing? This is a one-way street!" I apologized and explained that I was not from the area (although I made sure not to tell him I'm from Texas) and that I didn't know it was a street that it looked like a parking lot to me. Then he says "Why don't you follow the signs?" To which I calmly replied "What signs?" There were not "wrong way" signs, nor were there any "one way" or arrows pointing the correct way. On top of that, the only way I could read the text written in each of the parking spots "Permit Parking Only", was by doing exactly what I was doing - going the wrong way down a one-way street.

Man, after that, I parked in the "Permit Parking Only" because I didn't want to get a ticket - or killed. The bicycle officer said it was okay to park there - I checked. I went on foot from there. All the beauocracy in that city, and they cannot put decent signs up in front of the Capitol for crying out loud...