pulling a fast one

This weekend James and I took Friday off and drove up to Oregon to finally go to Crater Lake during one of the three weeks or so of the year when it is not covered in snow. You may or may not recall that a visit to Crater Lake was on our incredibly amateur agenda the last time we drove to Oregon, which was in April. I mean, you can GO to Crater Lake in April, but you will find it blanketed in at least 10 feet of snow and you'll need tire chains and the rim road will not be open and you won't be able to hike without snowshoes. Other than that, though, I'm sure it's a great time, especially if all the "winter sports equipment" you have with you is a windbreaker and a pair of running shoes.

We drove up in Marcus, which is James's Acura TL Type S (we name our cars...shut up). Marcus is one of those cars that talks to you and will warm your seat and has multiple keys, each of which is capable of associating with it an individual's seat and mirror and steering wheel settings and pre-set radio stations and favorite color and preferred style of underwear. This is so you can trade off drivers and never get that knee-in-the-chin thing that happens when you jump into the driver's seat not realizing that your 4'11" sister (disclaimer: I have no such sister) drove it to the DQ that morning or whatever. Also, Type S Acuras have a bigger engine, manual transmission, sporty suspension, and Brembo brakes; I assume the "S" stands for "Sport," but who knows. What I do know is that you can easily cruise along at 90 mph and feel like you're barely asking the car to work, which in almost all instances is a feature, not a bug, except when there is a California Highway Patrol officer right behind you.

So, about that. Somewhere near the Oregon border, I noticed that the large, dark SUV that had been riding my tail for the past 20 seconds or so was flashing some peculiar lights. Turns out it wasn't just some jerk tailgating me, it was some jerk in a nontraditional CHP vehicle tailgating and pacing me. Which is different.

In other words, I got pulled over for speeding. The officer (let's call him CHiP) came up and presented me with information already perfectly well known to me, namely that I had been going 85 in a 65 zone. After he looked at my license we had a little conversation that went something like this:

CHiP: Can you tell me a legal reason for why you were driving at that speed?
Me: Ummmm...I was really excited about getting to Ashland as soon as possible?
CHiP: Well, that is not a legal reason.
Me: Yeah, I didn't think so.

(Wait, was he saying it is illegal to be excited about going to Ashland? Because if that is wrong, I DON'T WANT TO BE RIGHT. Anyone who has been to the shoe stores in Ashland knows what I am talking about.)

And then, ladies and gentlemen, he let me off with a warning and allowed us to go on our merry way. (I only called him a jerk earlier in the post to create an aura of mystery and suspense.) There I was, all prepared to get my first ever moving violation, let alone speeding ticket, in 22 years of licensed driving, and this guy let me go. It was almost a letdown.

Once we were mobile again I asked James, "So what's in it for him to just give someone a warning? Don't they have quotas or something?" Remember now that this is James James, whose other car is a Porsche C4 and whose personal motto is "Multi-band, Multi-source, Nondiscriminating, Phased Array Radar Detector: Don't Leave Home Without It." Thus I was treated to an approximately 15-minute, near-verbatim recitation of California Vehicle Code Sections 22348 - 22366, with digressions into the finer points of de jure vs. de facto speed determination techniques employed by various policing agencies across the greater portion of the western United States.

I stated above that Marcus is a car that talks to you, but actually the person who talks to you is a tiny lady who hides in the vehicle navigation system. And while she is not a nag, exactly, she can certainly be persistent, especially if you decide to turn somewhere she does not approve of. I find myself sometimes eschewing my preferred route just because I want to keep the lady inside the navigation system happy. For instance, if there is a carpool lane exit on the left and a regular exit on the right, and she is telling me to use the exit on the right, I will use the exit on the right even if I have an entire basketball team in the car with me, just to shut her up. So now I am wondering if this is just me, or whether there are millions of drivers out there being badgered into non-optimal routing decisions on account of this navigational harridan.

Crater Lake was amazing. It is so blue it looks fake. I would go into a long story about why it is so blue and how the lake was formed (hint: it's called Crater Lake) and blah blah blah, but you can go the National Park Service website and find out all that stuff, so I will just leave you with some photos: