I've had four speeding tickets in my life…
#1 – I was driving home late at a night from a summer job during college after a week working in northern Saskatchewan. Anxious to get home, I was going pretty fast when an RCMP officer passed me just outside a town on the other site of the Qu'Appelle Valley. He whipped around, stopped me, then warned me that “speeding is dangerous because of all the deer” as he handed me the ticket (which also ate up the sales bonus I'd just earned that week as an added insult!)
#2 – I was going to pick up Shea during a practicum here in Regina when she was a nursing student. I went through a school zone at about 7 clicks over the posted speed limit but in what could only have been an attempt to get more money, the cop wrote up the ticket as if the school zone was in effect already. (It wasn't – the school zone began at 8am and I went by at 7:57am – which is the time he wrote on the ticket. So I protested that ticket on these grounds and the court dismissed it.)
#3 – when I was working in Alberta, my boss flew down from Edmonton to Calgary, rented a car and picked me up to go to a meeting in Crows Nest Pass. But we were way behind schedule so she asked me to drive while she worked on some paperwork. She also told me to “fly” and so I did. Along the way, there's a town called Longview which does the most evil trick a town can do – it goes from highway speed to town speed to school zone speed within a very short distance. I was whipping through town, slowed down to town speed but completely missed the school zone sign while talking to my boss about our upcoming meeting. I got stopped, tried an excuse and when the cop said “Well, the children at the school won't care if you're late for a meeting if you hit them.” Ouch! So when he went back to his cruiser to run my license, I asked my boss if the organization would pay for the ticket since she'd been the one who told me to drive so fast (and truth be told, was the reason we were late due to a scheduling mistake on her part.) She said it would so I handed over the ticket and we carried on our way.
#4 – on a Sunday morning, I was driving through Calgary with Shea's parents on a mad quest to find a Flames jersey since I'd managed to score a single ticket for the first Flames home playoff game in seven years. I didn't get a jersey but I did get a $100 ticket from a photo radar camera a few days later. I protested this one too, mainly because I object to photo radar in general. The reason I used was that the photo didn't clearly identify the driver but since the vehicle was registered to me, I got the ticket. How was I to know that it wasn't my father-in-law driving? They didn't write off the ticket but reduced it by 50%. I never did end up buying a jersey though.
So anyhow, I was sure that ticket #5 (and my first in probably three years) was going to come today. I took today and tomorrow off so we were heading out of Weyburn for Regina at noon. I was accelerating up to highway speed on a road leading out of Weyburn but which was still a 70kph zone. So the cop stopped me and I was sure that I was in for a nice big ticket. But he saw Pace in his car seat and after glancing at my license and registration, said “I don't want your son to stay in the hot sun while I'm writing you up so I'm going to let you go.” He didn't even write me a warning! So anyhow, Pace, if you're reading this someday, I owe you a hundred bucks (probably more than that actually – I don't even know what speeding tickets are these days.)
#1 – I was driving home late at a night from a summer job during college after a week working in northern Saskatchewan. Anxious to get home, I was going pretty fast when an RCMP officer passed me just outside a town on the other site of the Qu'Appelle Valley. He whipped around, stopped me, then warned me that “speeding is dangerous because of all the deer” as he handed me the ticket (which also ate up the sales bonus I'd just earned that week as an added insult!)
#2 – I was going to pick up Shea during a practicum here in Regina when she was a nursing student. I went through a school zone at about 7 clicks over the posted speed limit but in what could only have been an attempt to get more money, the cop wrote up the ticket as if the school zone was in effect already. (It wasn't – the school zone began at 8am and I went by at 7:57am – which is the time he wrote on the ticket. So I protested that ticket on these grounds and the court dismissed it.)
#3 – when I was working in Alberta, my boss flew down from Edmonton to Calgary, rented a car and picked me up to go to a meeting in Crows Nest Pass. But we were way behind schedule so she asked me to drive while she worked on some paperwork. She also told me to “fly” and so I did. Along the way, there's a town called Longview which does the most evil trick a town can do – it goes from highway speed to town speed to school zone speed within a very short distance. I was whipping through town, slowed down to town speed but completely missed the school zone sign while talking to my boss about our upcoming meeting. I got stopped, tried an excuse and when the cop said “Well, the children at the school won't care if you're late for a meeting if you hit them.” Ouch! So when he went back to his cruiser to run my license, I asked my boss if the organization would pay for the ticket since she'd been the one who told me to drive so fast (and truth be told, was the reason we were late due to a scheduling mistake on her part.) She said it would so I handed over the ticket and we carried on our way.
#4 – on a Sunday morning, I was driving through Calgary with Shea's parents on a mad quest to find a Flames jersey since I'd managed to score a single ticket for the first Flames home playoff game in seven years. I didn't get a jersey but I did get a $100 ticket from a photo radar camera a few days later. I protested this one too, mainly because I object to photo radar in general. The reason I used was that the photo didn't clearly identify the driver but since the vehicle was registered to me, I got the ticket. How was I to know that it wasn't my father-in-law driving? They didn't write off the ticket but reduced it by 50%. I never did end up buying a jersey though.
So anyhow, I was sure that ticket #5 (and my first in probably three years) was going to come today. I took today and tomorrow off so we were heading out of Weyburn for Regina at noon. I was accelerating up to highway speed on a road leading out of Weyburn but which was still a 70kph zone. So the cop stopped me and I was sure that I was in for a nice big ticket. But he saw Pace in his car seat and after glancing at my license and registration, said “I don't want your son to stay in the hot sun while I'm writing you up so I'm going to let you go.” He didn't even write me a warning! So anyhow, Pace, if you're reading this someday, I owe you a hundred bucks (probably more than that actually – I don't even know what speeding tickets are these days.)
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