Bound to happen at some point. Got me crossing into Colorado.
I once wrote that I lived in the slow lane when driving the Airstream. That’s still true. But it turns out that without the trailer, I’m still the aggressive driver I always was.
After a little over 11,000 miles driving America’s highways, I got a speeding ticket.
I got nabbed crossing the border in Colorado while heading to Mesa Verde. A sheriff’s deputy had set up shop and was ticketing drivers running the road back and forth between Moab and Mesa Verde.
When I crested a hill, she was right there. She got me for 75 in a 65.
She dropped it though to a 69 in a 65 because I cried.
Just kidding. I didn’t cry. I was just nice, and she cut me some slack so that no points were charged to my license.
In related news, it turns out my driver’s license expired in March while we were traveling, so the deputy said that Katie would need to drive for us to leave the side of the road.
Great. One of my mild nightmares, riding with Katie driving on curvy and steep mountain roads.
No worries though. Katie got us to Mesa Verde and back without incident, which is of course better than I was able to do.
The two infractions, speeding plus expired license with various surcharges added, cost me $76.50.
A pretty lightweight fine. I expected the fine to be north of $200 while we were waiting in the car watching Paw Patrol as the deputy wrote the ticket.
We’ll see if my insurance rates are affected by the 0 point speeding ticket. That would be the real bummer.
The Consolation
The only consolation from this encounter is the brief conversation that I had with the deputy when I got out of the car.
She asked about the generators mounted on the front of the Tahoe (as many do), and she asked if we were spending a lot of time camping. I let her know about our year of adventure to explore state and national parks around America with our kids, and she (a mom and park lover) thought it was awesome.
On the way back to her patrol car, she turned to re-read the website address on the back of the Tahoe.
I think we got a new blog reader (at an expensive $76.50 acquisition cost).
I’m envisioning a scenario where the officer has this major look of confusion when she sees dry erase doodles all over the windows and windshield of your vehicle. Do you still do this while on the trip? In fact, I think that would be a great short story…”The World is My White Board” by Mark Wilson Kelley.
Ha. I don’t carry the white board markers with me, but my kids have picked up on my bad habits. They write on walls, floors, tables, and windows, not unlike their dad who wrote on windows and mirrors in the house.