(Written by kencraw)

I’m sure all of you are sick of hearing about this topic, but I can’t help myself. I mean, put yourself in my shoes:

You’re walking out of Memorial stadium after a pleasant afternoon with a leisurely Cal win over an FCS opponent. You’re thinking to yourself, what a great day! I made the change over to getting a ridiculously expensive parking pass for a parking spot half a mile a way, but the leisurely walk down the hill will be nicer than fighting to get on the even more ridiculously expensive for a family of 5 shuttle run by Silverado. Look at all those people over there fighting to get on the Silv…

WHAT! Those are AC Transit buses!?!

See what I mean?

I know logistics can be a pain to get organized, but it really chaps my hide that they keep changing things on me long after the dates that I have to make my decisions on what to do. I guarantee you, even though I can’t confirm this factually, that the new game day information page wasn’t available in April when I had to make the decision to buy a parking pass.

If I had known in April that AC Transit and their cheaper prices (particularly for kids) were coming back, I would have most definitely NOT bought a parking pass, freeing an additional parking space for someone who wants it and saving me money (on the order of $90 for the season – parking pass: $140, AC Transit ~ $10 a game x 5 games I’m attending). But now it’s too late, I’ve already paid for the parking pass and will be stuck with it for the whole season.

Is it the worst thing ever? No, it’s not. $90 is a small figure compared to the 6 season tickets. Gas prices for the trip from Roseville, will affect my total cost almost as much as this change. In the end I think it’ll still be a good experience to try out the parking pass for a season to see what it’s like. So, this is not something to get any more worked up about than a single blog post rant.

But I would make this request to the Athletic Department: You need to get more of these sorts of things figured out and COMMUNICATED in March, particularly when they’re expected to change. People do make decisions based on little things like this and we don’t like the rug being pulled out from underneath us.

OK, that’s last you’ll hear about this from me… until I DON’T get a parking pass some year and they re-institute Silverado.