on my way to the impound lot
I’m perched up in the kitchen, sipping my morning coffee and nibbling the feet off the animal crackers I bought in bulk at the Babies R’ Us last night. The missis has another baby shower to attend today, which makes like 10 this year. Apparently making babies, especially the two at a time variety is all the rage in her circle. But when these winter months roll around and you can’t go outside really for five months, I can see where all these babies come from. We purchased a Sassy brand “Activity Arch”. And on my insistence, we got safety plugs, even though I was told that safety plugs do not make for good shower gifts. But I insisted anyway, because an open outlet is a deadly outlet.

After the baby buying, I dialed in my reward for the day by screaming over to REI for a new computer love bag that will now replace the old one that got screamed at and cursed upon with greater frequency this week.

I was due for a reward yesterday after having to visit both the Minnesota DMV and The Saint Paul Police Impound Lot. Yes, the Brougham was towed away. Very sad. I got caught in a reckless mess that all started when I went to renew my license a few months pack and got a letter from the Minnesota DMV informing me that instead of renewing my license they were going to withdraw it due to some ticket that I had failed to clear up in Portland, Oregon. Well I haven’t lived in Portland for at least five years and when I did I didn’t own a car, so I was baffled as to what the issue could be. After a month of emailing back and forth with the Oregon DMV, where they couldn’t find any violation on my driving record and required me to get proof from the Minnesota DMV that there was in fact a violation on my Oregon record. What?!? This part of the story I will never understand. Never. But I did just that, and after Oregon hunted through their off line files (violations after five years are no longer on the computer), they indeed found proof that I was a violator of Oregon Traffic Law, Section 15173: Failure to Obey a traffic signal while riding a muther fucking bicycle!

All of which brought back all the wonderful memories of that fateful night five years ago when, riding my bike through SE P-town, I heard vigilant screaming behind me and, looking over my shoulder I vaguely made out two people on bikes coming after me. I had no idea who they were so I decided to ditch ’em. I was proving myself very effective at that when I faintly heard one of them mention the word “police”. I came to a halt and after a while, sure enough two very angry and out of breath bike cops showed up. Man they were pissed. But so was I. I remember the girl cop wasn’t even able to speak she just put her hands on her knees and wheezed a lot while the boy cop wrote ferociously in a book and called me an “Anarchist”. Three minutes later, I was the proud owner of a red hot bike ticket. The ticket never made it home. I believe I ripped it up right there on the street and two weeks later I was on my way to S.A for eight months.

But you can’t escape the long arm of Johnny Law. His memory is sharp and tight and he didn’t smoke all that good clean mexican dope down in the Yucatan. He remembers everything.

So I wasn’t able to drive in Minnesota because of a long lost bike ticket in Oregon. Upon further inquiry I learned that if I waited another three weeks the ticket would reach its statute of limitations and I wouldn’t have to pay the thing at all. Weird system if you ask me. I decide to wait. I was riding my bike everywhere anyway and I got a MN I.D. so I could still swill booze. They coudn’t take that away from me. Although I did get in another oddly heated battle with one of the ugly underpaid workers at the DMV when I went to get my I.D. I told her I was still biking around and biking to work. She yelled at me in front of like 75 hmong patrons that “You don’t get it!! Your license is withdrawn, you can’t bike anywhere!” We went back and forth like this for a few minutes. I cursed her and gave the hmong bystanders some lesser lessons into the darker regions of the American vocab, “Impossible liar! beastly accident! swarthy pervert!” Lucky for everyone, everything was resolved when we untangled our linguistics knot and discovered that her definition of “Bike” was something that was motorized and required leathers to ride and my definition was chain powered and much slower. Fucking Language. What a mess.

In the time that it took for the Statute of Limitations to pass. My tabs expired, which I couldn’t renew since I had stopped my insurance and was still in “withdrawn” status on my license. So of course, between the time the limitations expire and before I could clear everything up with the Minnesota/Oregon DMV, they towed my sorry ass car to the Impound Lot for failure to display proper tags. I resolved everything thursday, and re-upped my insurance and then Friday got new tabs and went to get the Brougham out of the lot. And of course the battery was dead and they hd removed all the air from one of the tires (I think to prevent people from coming in and stealing their car back) so it took me at least an hour to recharge my car and put air back in the ailing tire. Hazah! Now everything is back as it was and I just have less money to buy CD’s with. Bastards.

The only bright side was that the guy at the Impound Lot, was hilarious and really nice. He made light of my plight by calling me a hardened criminal and a dangerous renegade. I think he felt sorry for me. He explained that I was a pretty minor offender. He also told an excellent story about a 79 year old John, who was arrested the night before and had his car impounded. The other bright side is Geico Insurance. The best damn company on the map today. In my five years of working with them, i have had the friendliest most amazing customer service ever. If only more companies could emulate. If only the people at the DMV could have a fifth of Geico’s understanding and patience.

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Moral of the story, for those of you who need one: if your trying to save the world by riding your bike and cutting down on the driving in the summer months when biking is possible, forget it. Give up!. Drive the biggest SUV on the market and drive alone everywhere and as often as possible. The system loves you and will take care of you forever.