More homestate pride:
A Melrose man accused of drinking while driving a lawn tractor…
Why, what’s the problem, officer?
He was just on the John Deere, a’going down the road to pick up his kids.
And he just *happened* to be enjoying a frosty brew as he did so.
Is that a crime?
Oh? Why yes it is!
Every once in a while, you hear about a car accident where someone has managed to get onto a highway going the wrong way.
Generally, the driver is drunk and the consequences are pretty bad.
I’ve always wondered, honestly, how in the hell that could happen? I mean, even drunk, how could you take the wrong ramp for the highway? Isn’t it very, very obvious?
So, I’ve been a bit harsh on this topic. That is, until today.
Today, distracted, but perfectly sober, in broad daylight, I managed to swing onto the wrong side of an onramp/offramp for an expressway.
I’m still not exactly sure how I managed to do this. It is a weird intersection, but that is no excuse.
I’ve driven this intersection plenty of times. I’ve always navigated it fine, but today, I swung the left turn, picked the wrong side of the road, and found myself facing traffic coming head on.
Thankfully, I was able to take quick evasive action and no one was hurt, no accident happened, and I escaped shaken but fine.
But my mind is totally blown by this little event.
So maybe it’s not so hard to get going the wrong way on a major highway.
I’m not excusing the devastation caused by the people who were driving drunk and managed to cause a lot of injury by making this mistake.
But maybe I understand it a little better now.
…I am convinced that the members of the human race are all nothing more than a truckload of clucking chickens wandering around the big cosmic coop.
Seriously.
Ok, so, backstory:
Over the Labor Day weekend, the people constructing a new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge closed the bridge to traffic. During this closure, they removed one section of the lower deck of the bridge, and placed a temporary section in place to divert traffic and allow vital work to be completed.
This made big news all over the Bay Area. It was much ado about “The S Curve”
Ba-kah! An S curve!
So when the bridge re-opened to traffic the following week, all the traffic reporters reminded commuters that people would be getting used to the new S curve, so allow extra time.
Ok, fine. Right? It’s a new thing, we all get used to it and move on.
Oh but nooooooo.
No, today, I had a rare occasion to have to cross the Bay Bridge. (stop shuddering, my dear mother!)
So, first of all, the approach going in an eastern direction on a good day is a cluster of merges that has always made me nutty.
Fine, it is what it is.
Then there had been an accident an hour earlier that had still left traffic snarled. Fine.
But oh…the best part. Once traffic was flowing along, I came through the tunnel that goes through Treasure Island, and then I was confronted with…DA DA DUUUUM…
The S Curve.
And people hit the brakes! Oh did they hit the brakes.
Fer crimeny’s sakes, people! It isn’t a frappin’ Z curve! It is quite easy to navigate. You follow those fabulous little white lines they paint on the ground. You turn your steering wheel gently one way, and then gently the other way. This is not a step on the brake-able road hazard!
My god. The freak out. The pandemonium! The utter ba-kah!
The Bay Bridge carries some 270,000 cars every day. And this change was implemented TWO WEEKS AGO!
But nooooooo.
Ba-kah!
*sigh*
This, along with people on the southbound highway slowing down to look at an accident that occurred on the northbound side, you know, OVER that heavy concrete barrier?
Bah. Kah.
Fine. I’ll just peck at my grain and shake my tailfeathers and call it a day.
I. Am. Cranky.
If you are *anywhere* in the vicinity of microphones, whether or not you are sure they are turned off, do not, under ANY circumstances, say something that you might wish was not broadcast, recorded and shared.
Ummmkay?
I know, I know, sure, Ronald Reagan ran afoul of this. So did George W. Bush.
And so, you’d think we’d all learn.
But no.
Disgraced California lawmaker denies affairs
And as a post script…why is it always the ardent “family values” people who are the most wacky?
Think about it.
…and the law will probabaly win.
Ok, not me, but a man named Dave Vontesmar. Mr. Vontesmar lives in Arizona. Phoenix, to be exact.
And Mr. Vontesmar has to commute daily for his job at Sky Harbor airport.
Mr. Vontesmar is not a fan of the recently installed cameras that Phoenix has been using to catch speeders (and, let’s be clear, raise revenue).
It is, as this article describes, a “photo-enforcement gantlet (sic) on Interstate 17, Arizona 51 and Interstate 10.”
Mr. Vontesmar IS, however, a fan of going in excess of the speed limit.
And so the perfect solution is born.
Dave Vontesmar wears a monkey mask when driving. Sometimes a giraffe mask, but mostly a monkey mask.
And when the tickets, some 37 so far, totaling fines upward of $6,500, show up at his home, he says:
“‘Not one of them there is a picture where you can identify the driver,’ Vontesmar said. ‘The ball’s in their court. I sent back all these ones I got with a copy of my driver’s license and said, ‘It’s not me. I’m not paying them.””
Well ok. I guess they use the car registration and the driver’s license photo to id the drivers and issue the ticket.
So Vontesmar is working a loophole here.
Except…
“…officers sat outside Vontesmar’s home and watched him drive to work. ‘We watched him four different times put the monkey mask on and put the giraffe-style mask on,’ Officer Dave Porter said. ‘Based on surveillance, we were positive that Vontesmar was the driver.'”
So fine, he’s probably not going to get away with this, but damn…you gotta like his style!
File this under: hot desert sun does something funny to folks.
Photo from azcentral.com
