  We present an analytical and numerical study of the parking lot model (PLM)
of granular relaxation and make a connection to the aging dynamics of dense
colloids. As we argue, the PLM is a Kinetically Constrained Model which
features astronomically large equilibration times and displays a characteristic
aging behavior on all observable time scales. The density of parked cars
displays quasi-equilibrium Gaussian fluctuations interspersed by increasingly
rare intermittent events, quakes, which can lead to an increase of the density
to new record values. Defining active clusters as the shortest domains of
parked cars which must be re-arranged to allow further insertions, we find that
their typical length grows logarithmically with time for low enough
temperatures and show how the number of active clusters on average gradually
decreases as the system approaches equilibrium. We further characterize the
aging process in terms of the statistics of the record sized fluctuations in
the interstitial free volume which lead to quakes and show that quakes are
uncorrelated and that they can be approximately described as a Poisson process
in logarithmic time.
