Humans are wildly creative when it comes to doing away with boredom. The moment you feel your attention span going nuts or that weird daytime yawn pestering you, it’s like click and you immediately know that you should start doing random things to keep yourself entertained.
Take Gareth Wild, for example: while driving a car in and of itself can be entertaining, doing so in the long run can become dull, so the guy decided to introduce a “new game mechanic” into the mix.
More Info: Twitter
If you're ever bored to tears with your drives to the local supermarket, try out Gareth's fun game
Image credits: GarethWild
So, Gareth Wild, the man behind creative video studio Explosive Alan and self-proclaimed Batman, went to Twitter recently to celebrate a relatively big achievement.
You see, for the past six years, Gareth has been frequenting a local Sainsbury’s (a supermarket in the UK) not only because he needed to do his regular shopping there, but also because it has an amazing parking lot that’s ideal for making a game out of.
In particular, every time he went shopping, he’d try to park in a different spot with the aim of having parked in every location he legally could.
Gareth decided he needs to have parked in every parking spot he could at a local Sainsbury's
Image credits: GarethWild
Hence, on Twitter, he detailed the whole thing: how he got satellite imagery of the parking lot, drafted a map of all of the posts, made a plan, and kept marking each stop as he parked in it on his visits.
“I don’t own a motorcycle and I’m not disabled, but I do have children, so I can legitimately use the family spaces. This means that in the car park there are 211 parking spaces that I needed to conquer,” elaborated Gareth.
Image credits: GarethWild
He calculated that, considering the over 200 possible parking spots with roughly one visit per week, plus extra visits amounting to around 60 visits per year, he could have been done with the challenge in under 4 years, but the pandemic slowed him down. Besides, not every spot is always available every time he comes.
So, the way he did it is he got a map, drafted a vector representation of the parking spaces, including the shopping cart stations and the special parking spots like those for the disabled. He also categorized them into blocks for easy tracking.
So, he made a vector map and a Google Spreadsheet to track his progress
Image credits: GarethWild
Six years of tracking and marking the parking spots on his Google Docs spreadsheet, and he had just finally achieved his goal of having parked in every single spot. And, as a bonus, he created a map of the best and worst spots to park in, so whoever frequents the Sainsbury’s in Bromley center, you’re welcome!
“Finally for anyone keen on taking a pilgrimage to the Bromley Sainsbury’s car park to bathe in my glory I’ve also marked out the best and worst spots to park because I’m such a swell guy. Seriously though, avoid the spaces next to the trolley bays, they’re s!@#. This will be my TED Talk,” concluded Gareth in his Facebook post about it.
Not all spaces were available to him, but he counted there are 211 spots that he could use, including family spaces
Image credits: GarethWild
April 24th marked the end of his long journey to conquer the parking lot with F20 being his last spot, which he himself described as “a pig to get in.” Well, it wasn’t too bad, but still, something that he was truly excited about.
And people on Twitter loved it. Not only has the thread managed to gain over 120,000 likes with over 12,300 retweets, but also many shared their own little tracking games.
To make things easier, he categorized the lot into blocks
Image credits: GarethWild
One person shared how he walked every street in Edinburgh during lockdown, while another mentioned how he logged all of his 880+ flights and mapped all of the airports, hotels, and sports arenas he has visited. Talk about dedication!
Comes April, 2021—six years after he started—and he now has used every space in the parking lot
Image credits: GarethWild
He even provided a nifty map of best and worst spaces as a result of this long adventure
Image credits: GarethWild
You can check out the whole thread and the reactions in Gareth’s now-viral post here, but before you go, let us know your thoughts on this and whether you’ve done something similar in the comment section below!
Here are some internaut reactions to Gareth's fun Twitter thread
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