Vin Van

I was employed by the municipal government for about 13 years in the transportation department. Early in my career my job was to conduct traffic studies. About my second year in a chap named Vince was hired and we became fast friends, working together until I left. There were all kinds of different studies we undertook, one being Origin/Destination studies. The purpose is to ascertain travel patterns. The method of determining those patterns is to write down the licence plates of the passing vehicles by a field crew stationed at strategic points. Once this was done, somebody would match up the licence plates and calculate who went where. I was assigned to do the matching up on one of the studies; Vince was working in the pod next to me. I came across the personalized plate VIN VAN and immediately told Vince if he ever got a van it should be called the Vin Van. That became his nickname and I still call him that after 25 years. 5 or 6 years after the VIN VAN occurrence, Vince and I were assigned a traffic count together in the downtown area of our city where street parking is at a premium. We were now employed full time in the office and rarely ever did traffic counts anymore, but this was an urgent situation. Having the perfect spot to conduct the study properly is a top priority. We managed to obtain that prime space during the early morning shift but when we went back for the midday shift, somebody else was parked there. Plan B was to pull out the lawn chairs out and sit on the sidewalk. After a few minutes of counting and for reasons unknown, I went to the back of the vehicle occupying our prime parking space. It was a van and to my amazement it was the VIN VAN.