I now have a record

Actually, it's just a parking ticket. So it's not really that sexy.

Anyway. Not too long ago, some geniuses at Corporation of Hamilton, or government, I'm really not sure who determines what should happen to a city car park, chose to lay some tarmac over a space containing about 10 bike parking areas. No sign to indicate what was happening, and I don't think it was announced anywhere. I think most of us assumed that they were laying it down to make it smoother for us who had to park there or something (of course that didn't work, if you parked there, the tarmac would melt around your kickstand by midday).

However, people continued to park bikes there without any issue for months. The only reason in retrospect that I could think of as to why they would want to remove the bike bays is if car drivers had problems navigating around that area - in which case maybe they should have removed a car bay or two instead and widen the roadway, but again I don't make those decisions.

I heard a rumour that someone got ticketed for parking there about a week and a half ago but paid it no mind. Surely there was no reason for it, there was no sign indicating that bikes cannot be parked in the area previously marked as such.

Lo! and behold, today I emerge from another hard day at the office and see the line of bikes, at least 9 of them, decorated with those ugly (and sometimes hard to remove) parking tickets complete with bright, bold, yellow, mailing envelope.

It's just baffling, that with new office buildings going up constantly, the powers that be have been reducing the parking space of especially cycle riders. I'd like to see it addressed somehow, but I'm not holding my breath. I honestly do think that there are plans to eventually cordon off any sort of parking whatsoever for cyclists and eventually force them to pay a fee in order to park in the city. This does nothing of course, to encourage people to NOT drive cars into the city and choose public transportation instead. Nothing!