Thank You Ben

While I was riding from San Francisco to Portland with my new friend Jeremiah I had a little run in with the police. Shortly after crossing the Oregon border and happy to have ridden some of the best roads of the trip, I was really having a good time.

Steinbeck mentions in "Travels with Charlie" how every state seems to know what the best speed is for a certain road and they rarely agree. This was a case of a drop in the limit with no perceptible difference in the quality of the road.

Jeremiah flew by an off-duty cop going the other way faster than he could turn on his radar. I didn’t have that luxury, by the time I passed the cop it was too late. He only caught me going 81 mph, which wouldn’t have been a big deal on a 75 mph Interstate. However, here the speed limit was 55 mph. The ticket was for a whopping $242. After 6 years without a ticket (I did get pulled over in Holland for looking Dutch, but that’s another story), my streak came to an end, or so I thought.

In Portland I stayed one night with my friend Mari’s sister, Sara. It turns out Sara, her husband David, and Ben (David’s twin) are all lawyers, so I took out my ticket and asked if they had any ideas. Ben spotted a technicality that was worth investigating. He wrote a letter to the county judge to contest the validity of the ticket. He had the thought that if it works, the ticket will go away and if it doesn’t, I would be in exactly the same position. I liked his thought process.

After a couple of weeks I heard from Ben that the judge had accepted his demurrer, making the ticket go away. So I want to say "Thank you Ben" a bunch more times.