“You should really slow down.”

 The faint voice in my head was actually starting to make sense.  But not soon enough.  It was Tina, reminding me that even the rural coastal areas of the state of California were governed and policed by the CHP and, more often than not, they had my number.  I am on vacation this week and we are on our way home to the Bay Area after picking up Cali(our dog)and a few assorted acoutrements from the house in Seattle.  We decided to take our time, drive through Portland, visit friends in Eugene, check out the Oregon wine country and drive down the coast to Mendocino for a couple of days. 

 We are drving MY car this time.  It has been in retirement in Seattle and it wanted to RUN.  It is a beast of an automobile: Infiniti M35, V8, jet black with a console that the astronauts that pilot the Space Shuttle would envy.  It is the type of car that is more than capable of obeying all speed limits and laws but if you push it, it will wink at you as if to say:

 ”Oh, you want to go FAST”

I hadn’t driven it in months and here we were, jetting down 101 at the ocean and  I had the PEDAL to the proverbial METAL.  And I felt untouchable.  After all, the poetic factor was high.  Here I was with my girl and my dog, on the coast, with all my stuff.  Temperature was about 85 and the sunroof was open. All I lacked was a pair of driving gloves and some impossibly expensive, self-important sunglasses.  Yeah, I was THAT guy.

Then the inevitable happened.

Here comes ”Smokey” in the opposite direction in the fast lane.  I thought:

“Surely he isn’t clocking me” he was.

 ”Surely he isnt going to U-Turn across the dirt median to gun me down” he did.  

Everytime I get pulled over, I always regress to the first time it happened.  I was 17 and I was FREAKED.  Heart racing, life flashing before my eyes(I mean I had to go home and tell my Dad eventually, right?).  Cop comes to the window.  I was speeding, of course, but I felt like I had just gotten caught with six kilos of narcotics blowing out of the  trunk, going 30 miles over the speed limit, the wrong way down a one-way street with a bottle of booze in my hand.  Funny how everything is so dramatic when you are a kid.  I managed to escape that first infraction unscathed, but never learned how to slow down.

Now, all I think about is how much it’s going to cost, should I go to traffic school? How is this going to mess up my insurance?  How much grief am I going to get from Tina?  Even the dog seemed to think less of me. 

All I got from Tina was a look.  And then, she couldn’t hold it in anymore:

“Should I say it?”

“I told you you should really slow down.”