Police

I went to San Fran this weekend for Shaine's wedding. Meredith and I drove up, and after seeing the massive amounts of gear Meredith had packed for her one small child I see why she was the one petitioning for us to drive, rather than fly. Anyhow, the morning of the wedding we loaded up and headed out to the Oakland temple. We were kind of rushing, there was traffic, we were trying to get there early, I was driving down a big hill, I was feeling anxiety about not arriving on time, etc... The point is that there were reasons, legitimate reasons, for me to be speeding.

I am usually fortunate enough to not get caught doing things like that, but not this time. I saw the police car lights go on behind me, and I started switching lanes to pull over. Before the cop even got to the window I already had my driver's license out (the valid one this time) and was leaned over Meredith grabbing at anything in the glove compartment that looked like it might be the registration. The officer started telling me that I was pulled over for going 86mph (I think it was more like 90, but it's not like I was going to correct him), and I'm pretty sure I interrupted him when I shoved my driver's license at him and just sort of blurted out "I know officer, I'm sorry, I'm not from here, not familiar with the area, and we're late for a wedding." Meredith handed him a few registrations, we're not sure any of them were valid anymore and he went to go run my license. He was actually really fast, came back and said to me "I'm going to give you a really big break here and let you off with a warning, although I'm pretty sure the freeway speed limit is still 65mph in Huntington Beach. Just please slow down and drive more carefully...especially with the baby in the car!"

Once we were back on the road I told Meredith that I really couldn't believe he let me off without any kind of a ticket when I was going fast enough to be arrested, but that I also couldn't believe I was one of those people who got reprimanded for driving dangerously with a small child in the car. When Patty heard she announced that she would have rather had the ticket than the reprimand about the baby in the car. The baby reprimand did make me feel like an irresponsible adult for endangering the life of my niece, but I'd still rather get the speech than the ticket.

I did slow down after that, and we made it safely to the temple in plenty of time for the wedding.