Blue Monday

Today's Blue Monday with Smiling Sally is not my norm for this day. If you want to see and enjoy some really interesting and lovely blues, join her and her many friends.



LEAPING LENA TO SPEEDING MEME:

As a rule, I do not exploit too much of my personal life. Only reason I am sharing this today is to make you more aware of what can happen, and avoid it happening to you.

On July 10. mid-afternoon, I received a call from my niece. She had a little garden in her back yard that was producing too many tomatoes. Knowing how much I love home grown anything, especially tomatoes, she suggested I come and get some.

In route to her house, had to go through a four-way intersection and turned onto a service road. I was not on the freeway. On this service road, about fourth of a mile, is a slight rise, not a hill. Just as I approached this rise, I could see a lot of stopped traffic and police cars. I am sure there were at least 8 to 10 police cars lined up on the side of the road.

At first, I thought there had been a wreck, license check, or something bad had happened in the nearby apartments. That was not the case. There were so many cops standing in the road and some under a nearby tree. They all had their little radar guns aimed right toward me.

I thought, I was entering a war zone, or firing squad. Had no clue what was happening. Well it did not take long for me to find out. As I approached, one of the policeman motioned for me to pull over. I asked him what was going on. All the cops there had a radar and clocked my speed. He said I was going 48 miles in a 30 mile speed zone. I told him I thought it was a 35 zone. That did not matter, he was still giving me a ticket. I told him this was my first ticket. He said he hoped it was my last.


As I was not knowledgeable about this, I did not not know what to do to settle this issue. He replied, read the back of the ticket and do as it says. Well, if he thought I was going to understand that, he was wrong. I read the back of the ticket, and tried to figure out what to do. You had to wait three days before calling the Municipal Court. When I did that, the people were so rude and said read the back of the ticket as to disposition. Hung up and waited another few days. Got a very nice person this time. She walked me through what I should do and then mail the ticket to them.

It took four weeks for me to receive my "verdict". I have to pay a very hefty fine, and am on a 90 day probation period. If I stay clean for this time frame, it will not appear on my record.



The point is: watch out for the "blues", as they are certainly watching you. This is not a photo of my stop. He would have really hauled me off if I had asked him to let me take pictures of all this for my blog. Heaven forbid!

Also, I did get my tomatoes, but they sure came at a high price.