Wow…

…and not the good kind of “wow,” either.

Sure, I’ve been in worse bathrooms.

First the pluses…the park is pretty nice from what I could tell (admittedly I had to rush through…I was looking for a bathroom, it was hot, and the ol’ insides were not happy ), right across from the HP Pavilion in San Jose (we were there for Strikeforce’s Carano vs. Cyborg…great night of fights).  The small portion of the park was pretty normal, there was a family having a kid’s birthday (or I assumed it was) and were grilling something or other (smelled great…thankfully ) on the provided barbecue stations. I thought it was pretty cool they provided stations (or maybe they were grilling with a portable grill?…not 100% sure). There were other people scattered about as well…seemed like everyone was pretty relaxed (which might be expected for a park setting ). I wasn’t even sure they were gonna have bathrooms, when lo and behold…I saw a sign pointing to my left with that magic word (it sure seemed magic at the time…I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming)…”Restrooms.”

I figured they were in a publicly used park and wouldn’t be in great shape, and you know what? I was right!

If clean and well-stocked, the bathroom would have been pretty nice. However…they were out of toilet paper (at least they had seat covers) and apparently no one thinks to dispose of said seat covers in the toilet…I think 4 out of 5 preferred the floor. Carefully making my way around the piles of used seat covers, I took care of business and hightailed it out of the stall…only to discover they didn’t have soap, either. Okay, no biggie, the doors will open in an hour (turned out to be an hour and about 35 minutes), at least I can rinse my hands and dry them off. WRONG! There was water, I had to dry my hands on my pants…oh well, at least they were mostly clean.

I thought it was also interesting that the stall had a urinal and a standard toilet in there (both stainless steel), and no lock on the door. There was a second outside the stall, so I’m not really sure why there’s both in the stall…still haven’t figured that one out. There was lots of open space, I assume to keep it smelling as pleasant as possible, and the design was really pretty cool (with an entire wall made of glass bricks). I wish I had gotten pictures but truth be told, I didn’t think about starting this blog until after I had used this one (in fact, this bathroom is why I decided to write this blog). Trust me…it’s better for all of us that I didn’t get pictures inside the stall. The bathroom gets a bonus half-point for the design and use of non-porous stainless steel instead of porcelain (and a black seat on the toilet…I don’t think anyone would have wanted white).

I got back in line only to find out from another group there that some bums had used the trees the night before at the weigh-ins. Yay!

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