On our way back from BM, NV it was my turn to drive.
I figured out a little trick driving our manual sedan on long road trips. To avoid cramping up your calf working the gas for 5 hours, don't drive in shoes. Well, not in regular shoes (pretty barefoot driving is either discouraged or illegal). B. and I treated each other a long time ago to a pair of vibram running shoes for each of us. Happy birthday to us! They look weird, and it took a while to get used to the toes, but I discovered they're not only fantastic for street running, but they're great for driving. Instead of straining my ankle and cramping up my leg muscles controlling the gas, these nifty shoes let me just apply pressure with my big toe through the hours.
BM seems to be in a constant state of construction. Cones line the highway for no apparent reason for literally over 15 miles. I counted. This periodic construction happens on and off for the first hour or so from BM to another small town called Elko, then continues for another stretch. 75mph down to 55 mph and back again. Over and over. Speed up, slow down, try not to get stuck behind yet another semi-truck. As we passed Elko, finally free from the cones for a while, I looked over at a billboard. B. and I were talking, and I didn't see him until it was too late.
He started to follow us, turned on his lights, and I pulled over, resigned to the fact that I would have to kiss a fair chunk of change goodbye because I had been going 82 in a 75 mph zone. I just didn't pay attention long enough to ease off the gas.
Some people have a lead foot. I guess I have a steel toe.
We went through the usual drill, license and registration (just barely renewed, phew!) and then he informed me that I had been going over 80 in a 65mph zone. Somewhere in all of the switchbacks between 75 and 55 I had missed the sign that said 65.
Crap.
Now my $90 ticket looked like it would be over $300.
He took quite a while back inputting our info into the system, making B. and I sweat a little. I apologized to her profusely, she was very tender and understanding. He came back and surprised me with an off-topic query:
"You two going to college?"
I was so nervous about the cash that I didn't understand his question. I thought he was asking if we were physically traveling to a college campus. B. interjected through my confused stuttering and told the officer that yes we were both students. ... Oh, that's what he meant.
He then explained that this ticket would cost upwards of $300, but when he was attending college in Idaho he lived on $200 a month. He didn't want to clean us out because we "don't exactly look like desperados." We weren't the kind of people he was out on the road trying to find.
And we weren't. We were two struggling college students with a campus parking pass hanging from our rearview mirror, our car recently vacuumed, washed and detailed, new tires and new registration. We were just trying to get home, and I didn't notice the speed limit change. Honest mistake.
He pulled some strings for us and wrote up the offense as a rural speeding ticket, which keeps it from appearing on my record and drops the cost down to a mere $75.
I think B. could have kissed him.
We thanked him over and over again and drove off at a timid, grandmotherly pace for the rest of the way home.
God bless Nevada Highway Patrolmen. God bless vibrams. God bless my wife who was so adamant about vamping up the car before making the trip.
But someone's gotta do something about those cones.
S
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