Removing a Parking Boot under the Cops’ Noses

When I was in grad school I couldn't afford a campus parking permit. But my car had out of state plates, so I just parked on campus anyway and threw the tickets away. One day I came out at lunch time to find my car immobilized by a wheel boot.

I went back into my lab to work, muttering curses as I tweaked my instruments and tended to the equipment. I was so distracted thinking about the boot that I accidentally poured liquid nitrogen on my shoe, freezing it down to -321 degrees Fahrenheit. As I frantically pulled my shoe off to save my toes from frostbite, a light bulb went on in my head. Liquid nitrogen!

I had enough experience with the stuff to know how brittle materials become at -321 F. My idea would be risky, but I was damned if I was gonna let the campus parking nazis take my money without a fight.

I arranged to have my mom, who lived out in the suburbs, pick me up that evening. A quick trip to the hardware store to buy a sledge hammer and I went to work. I had my mom park her car parallel against the curb right behind mine and open her hood. That way it just looked like I was below her car working on it. She strolled back and forth acting as lookout. It was a fairly well-traveled street and the campus cops drove by frequently.

The padlock on the boot was fairly tough to get to, stuck underneath the boot. The core was shrouded by a metal hood, but the body of the lock was exposed. A large coffee cup would just barely fit over the lock, so I filled the cup with liquid nitrogen and held it on the lock using a heavy glove. The liquid nitrogen boiled away rapidly and I had to refill the cup several times from a large thermos bottle. Cops drove by several times, and people on the sidewalk strolled by frequently as well. My mom just calmly inquired as to the progress I was making with her car and they all moved on.

After boiling away about a liter or so of liquid nitrogen, the lock finally got cold enough that the boiling quit. I managed to find an angle from which I could hit the lock body and took one well-aimed swing with the sledge hammer. It shattered the lock's core and sent the body tumbling down the road. The boot was held on by a nut in a deeply recessed shroud, but fortunately my four-pronged tire tool had one wrench that fit the nut, and I quickly removed the boot. I found the lock body and kept it as a souvenir (I intended to brag about this, and I wanted the evidence to show off). It had cracks emanating from the hole where the core went in, and the metal was broken into layers bunched up against each other at the edge of the hole - something stainless steel would never do at ordinary temperatures.

I thought about maybe waiting until the wee hours of the morning and sneaking over to the parking office with the boot and a lock of my own, and locking the boot onto one of the parking office vehicles. Then, I would call the school paper in the morning and tell them that someone had booted a parking office vehicle. But the parking office is right next to the campus police office, and they share a parking lot. Cop cars would likely be going in and out during the night. I'm not quite that bold. So I just left the boot sitting there. The next morning it was gone.

From then on, I parked off campus.