I'm Clocked and Ticketed!

I'm back ..back in Zachary. Carrie and I spent one night at home. She at her home and me at mine and yesterday she requested I pick her up so she could spend the day with me. It's the Play Doh. She has an addiction to that stuff and she isn't allowed to have it at her house. We keep it at my house and she keeps returning to play with it.

Yesterday was Lessie's birthday. We celebrated with a red velvet cake, a yellow duck and friends. Time has flown by as it always does. If nothing else, seeing them grow up so fast makes one want to grasp each minute and hour of living. I have more of a past then a future left and that's a strange thing for me to think about. Banish the complaints of boredom. I'm alive today, relatively healthy and I have the ability to "grasp" this time.

Carrie will be spending today and the weekend with her dad so I headed back here to Zachary. A light rain prevented me from putting the top down on the roadster. Without my sidekick, I could actually pack a small suitcase and slip it into the floor board on the  passenger side of the car. I clocked 76 miles to this hotel and was able to calculate gas mileage on that roadster from the fill up before I began this trip. The roadster gets 25 miles per gallon. I don't know if I'm all that impressed. I think the Grand Marquis gets better mileage.

The GPS that I reset to "quickest route" did a wonderful job of staying off the cow paths. Interstate driving until my exit off I-110 north at Exit 6. That is the route I was hoping it would choose. This was a test drive with it this time.

About 4 miles from the hotel, my retinas got a jolt of white light. A second later I realized I would be getting a ticket in the mail for breaking the speed limit on that stretch of two lane highway. I think I was doing 55 in a 45.

As I pulled into the Holiday Inn, I noted another camera set up just beyond the driveway and paused to watch as that brilliant flash of white light recorded car after car that would be receiving their picture in the mail and requesting a sum of money for their misbehaving. Gone are the days of watching for that police cruiser hid in the bushes to use his radar gun and issue you a ticket.  The post office now delivers them right to your doorstep and you never have to show your drivers license to get a winning ticket!

Somehow I resent this. I like the old way. I thought it much more gentlemanly and polite to have the nice officer stroll up to your car after killing the lights and siren that signaled to everyone on the highway your plight, and request your driver's license, registration and insurance card ma'am.

Of course he did the obligatory question of "Do you know how fast you were going?" or " Do you know why I stopped you?" I play dumb right here. I don't admit to a thing so they kindly share and then they take all your paperwork and walk back to their cruiser as you watch them from your side view mirror.

Soon they return but not until they have run a check on you to make sure you don't have warrants out or are a fugitive and that your car is not stolen.

He walks back with his pretty pink ticket book and returns your paperwork along with that pink slip and explains what you are to do.

At least you have a pleasant encounter with the nice officer when you get your ticket. It's just so impersonal getting it in the mail. No one to whine too. No one to try to weasel your way out of it with an excuse that the friendly officer has heard a million times. I miss the "old" days.

Today the roadster will be set to cruise and my favorite reading will be the posted speed limit signs alongside the highway. I haven't had a ticket in years and years. I have broken my winning streak with this ticket and I'm not pleased. I just hope my insurance company is kind to me and doesn't also issue their form of punishment.

I'm done!