What a Waste

I got pulled over by the state highway patrol on Saturday.

By my standards, it was late.  I was driving to Sedona, about 1.75 hours north of me, to hear my older child, my talented daughter, sing with her high school choir at a lovely chapel located on the edge of the town's famed red rocks.  They were coming home from a choir festival in Flagstaff, and their stop at the chapel was nice side trip for them.  Because my daughter is a senior, I wanted to hear her sing one last time in this gorgeous venue.

I left home 30 minutes later than I had planned, and then traffic heading north was unbelievably heavy.  It felt like rush hour traffic in downtown Phoenix - yuck!  By the time I exited the interstate and was heading into Sedona on the two-lane highway, I was 20 minutes away from my destination, and the choir was scheduled to sing in ten minutes.  Uh oh........

Naturally, I decided to open it up a bit and try to make up some time.  The guy behind me must have been drafting me, because he started to speed up too.

Unfortunately, too late did I step on the brakes.  I spied the highway patrolman as he made a U-turn and flip on his lightbar.  The kick in my gut was jolting.

The driver behind me pulled over to let the cop come up behind me.  I eventually found a pullout, and stopped my car.  My hands shaking like an LA skyscraper during a quake, I managed to find the registration and insurance card in the glovebox and hand it to the very nice officer.

Turns out the truck behind me was also being pulled over, so he nudged his gigantic F-150 in front of my tiny Civic.

Several minutes later, the policeman returned from his car to hand me my citation.  He was very kind and sympathetic to my agony.  He told me he was "cutting me a bit of a break" and not citing me for speeding.  Instead, noting a fairly new law in our state, he was citing me with wasting of natural resources.  So, instead of being fined $140 and earning some lovely points on my driving record, I was fined $60 and received no points.  I thanked him, carefully nudged my car out onto the highway, and proceeded down the road to my destination, driving approximately 3-5 miles under the speed limit.  It wasn't until I arrived at the chapel (on time, due to the choir being delayed), that I saw the humor in the situation.

I was charged with "wasting natural resources".................while driving a hybrid vehicle.

TTFN!