Go, Speed Racer! Or, Trailhead Spouse Discovers How Oregon Funds its Highways Without a Sales Tax

Trailhead Spouse and I have this little game. Since he is congenitally incapable of keeping his speed within the posted limits, every so often I will look over at the speedometer and say “85?” He’ll immediately lift his foot off the gas pedal, look slowly over to me with an affected look of confusion as the car decelerates, and say, “What are you talking about? I’m only doing” – here he glances down at the becalmed speedometer – “70 miles an hour!” I’ll raise my eyebrows, having made my point and achieved the desired result, and look away for ten or so minutes till I have to do it again.

I didn’t make it in time tonight.

I was busy piddling around on the computer in the passenger seat, having just turned the driver’s seat over to TS a few miles back at a rest area. I saw the flashing lights out of the corner of my eye, as we were careening happily down the road.

“Shit. That’s me,” he said.

“Well, this is a new state,” I replied without missing a beat and barely looking up from the screen. “It was probably time for you to get a ticket. You haven’t gotten one since Thanksgiving weekend 2001 on the way to Lake Superior.”

TS’s speeding tickets have been a sore spot with me since my 24th birthday, when he brought me home a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a ticket for peeling out in his 1974 Porsche 911 at a stop sign. A cop had just pulled up to the intersection across from him, an event he had failed to observe in his eagerness to demonstrate the abilities of his Porsche to his passenger, an insufferably geeky fellow grad student who used to say things like “I need to go fabricate – I mean analyze – some data!” Nothing like a citation for “too fast for conditions” (it was raining, too) to make an impression.

The intervening 11 years have only slowed his rate of ticket-gathering, not halted it, as we saw tonight.

TS pulled over after he saw the flashing lights, having realized he was totally busted. Let us just say that he was going so fast we sat on the shoulder of the road for a good 60-90 seconds waiting for the Oregon State Policeman to show up behind us. And when he did show up, he shined an approximately 1,000 watt flashlight in my face on the passenger side of the car. I rolled down the window, squinting at him. He looked like he was about 13, and he was nervous, too. I could see his hands shaking. I suppressed the urge to look up at him and say “Yeah, I’ll have a cheeseburger, some fries and a diet coke with extra ice.” Instead, I just squinted at him.

“Good evening, folks. I just need to let you know this conversation is being recorded. I clocked you at 88 miles an hour. Is there a reason you were going so fast?” Officer Peachfuzz asked.

TS took a breath and looked as though he wanted to make a long speech, but just exhaled sharply and said, “no.” Officer Peachfuzz took his license back and spent what seemed like half an hour examining it before he returned to my window with his megawatt search light.

“Okay, well I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do tonight,” he said as though he were a used car salesman about to make us a great deal. “I’m going to give you a citation, and you can take care of it at this address,” he said, tapping the yellow paper. “See, you’ve got till November 3, so you’ve got a whole month. Can I answer any questions for you folks?”

TS stared hard at the ticket, perhaps hoping that it would spontaneously combust in his grasp and Officer Peachfuzz would run screaming back to his patrol car and peal out like a testosterone-infused 24-year-old in a 1974 Porsche.

But he didn’t.

“Where’s the amount?” asked TS.

“About two-thirds of the way down,” Officer Peachfuzz offered helpfully. “Four hundred and twenty-one dollars.”

My head snapped to the right and I was staring into the searchlight again. “What? Are you f— ” I stopped, swallowing the “ucking kidding me,” when I remembered the conversation was being recorded. I smiled sweetly. “Have a nice night,” I said.

“Drive safely, folks,” advised Officer Peachfuzz before tipping his hat and heading back to his car.

TS looked at me with a defeated expression. “You’re gonna blog this, aren’t you?”

Ya think?