Tickets....!!

So....a while ago I was driving along the road with Chris and we got pulled over. It seems that when he got the plates for the car and asked how long the registration lasted they told him "a year". Hmmmm, maybe they should have mentioned that it was April and the year expires in your birthday month...May to May in his case. So there we were happily ignorant when we were pulled over with sirens and lights and the whole shebang (I have never typed that before....quietly chuckling to myself now), and informed that our plates were expired, and had been for a couple of months.

"Can I see your license, registration and proof of insurance ma'am?"

No.

Well.....We were just popping over to a friends house and Chris had been drinking and I had not even considered taking my purse with me. So no license.....bugger! The very nice police man very kindly asked me to step out of the car and breathe into his breathalyser. I was quite happy to oblige, as I had never done this before and it was quite a treat....I really must stop considering all experiences here like that -thinking they will be great for my blog -I am going to get in trouble one of these days. hehehehe

So after that mildly embarrassing incident (he never turned his lights off) I was the lucky recipient of two tickets and a court date. Here, you can choose to either plead guilty and pay up or go to court. We thought we would give court a whirl...just for kicks. Before this I called the number on the back of my tickets and asked how much I might have to fork over. I was not so nicely told that having a NZ license is as good as none at all, which I didn't like....it would be a $10 fine for a US license at home in your purse, but for me it would be $156. OH S&#@T!!! I mean, goodness! And our expired registration another $86.

Off to court we went....we had a date and a time, so we turned up no knowing what to expect. And what a treat it was....!!! We arrived and there was a whole group of people given the same date and time. We went through the metal detectors and got whizzed and scanned (Chris unfortunately likes to carry about 400 things in his flight suits' 30 pockets, so that took a while). We apparently passed the 'dress code' of no tank tops (singlets) or flip flops....really?? You might wonder who would wear these things to court to see a judge about serious matters....the lady in front of us in line. hehehehe. In her short shorts as well.

So we sat and waited for 3pm to roll around. The judge came in and the list started, in alphabetical order. I immediately thought that this was good as I was quite nervous by this point and was not sure what would be required. Let me give you a brief rundown of what came before us. There were two teenage girls with their parents. One with a suspended license already (if you drive over 24 miles per hour above the speed limit your license is suspended), whose mother wanted to know if she could get a special dispensation for going to school and work. Uuuuh, No.

There were a couple of Mexicans there who didn't speak English at all, so they had friends translating for them. From them I found out that a drunk driving ticket is about $975 and/or 40 hours of community service (I couldn't quite catch that). The most interesting character there by far was the young skinny Gothic guy with long hair on top and shaved hair underneath. He had dyed it all red and he was wearing the biggest boots I had ever seen. They must have had 2 inch soles, and they seemed to have a lot of metal attached to them, to make them noisy when he walked. And when he walked he had a very long, very slow stride....He walked up in front of the judge and started to talk about his circumstances (no insurance or proof of I think), when his girlfriend (?) who was sitting across the aisle from us very loudly said "yes he did"....it was hilarious....I guess it's hard to explain, but we were near the back of the room and she was craning forward in her seat to hear everything said. The judge finally told her (after a couple of outbursts) to come up and help him. Very funny stuff, Chris went quite red in the face trying not to laugh.

OK, so it finally got to the M's, and we were up. By then I had sweaty palms, and it all seemed to go too quickly. It ended up being very anticlimactic. The judge asked if we had re registered the car, and we had and showed him all of the appropriate documents. So he said he would dismiss that charge. So I thought I would give it a whirl and said that I did have a license and handed him my NZ one. Which he obviously couldn't figure out, so I told him where to look for the expiry date. And we said that I was in the process of getting a greencard and showed him my magic piece of paper from Homeland Security....and.....he threw the ticket out! But said that I might want to get an American license one of these days! HA!

So all in all it was a satisfying experience and I'm glad we didn't just decide to pay the tickets. And I hope to not get any again....!! I am only sorry that we didn't find out what the deal with the man sitting next to Chris was....at first glance he looked like a normal man in a suit with a beard, but at second glance we noticed that he had two very long "tails" coming out of the bottom of his beard.....they were pure white and consisted of about 10 hairs each and he had twisted them into little strings.....what a character!! heheheeh