A few years back, I was working at the CRC in Blacksburg. That summer, some time in July or so, my son was at the Rickey Stokes basketball camp. He was a ball boy for Rickey, back when they had kid ball boys. At lunch, I decided to run down, given how close I was, to watch some of it. It was near the end of camp, and they were starting to play games in Cassell. I left the CRC, and coincidentally, it was when the tray system turf was being put in Lane Stadium. The original trays with the grass was put together and grown at the Tech airport and transported down after they matured, and as they got the subsurface ready to put them in.

Anyway, as I'm driving from the CRC, I'm following a semi pulling a long trailer with a load of the trays on it, as they 'put the puzzle back together' to make a football field. I was right behind the truck, pretty curious, noticing how there were flags in each piece, showing how they were to match up, I suppose. The next thing I see are blue lights in my rear view mirror. I pull over in the parking lot. An extremely supersized Tech cop tells me I'm speeding coming down Tech Center Drive. I vehemently protest. The truck was going just as fast as me - actually holding me up, or I'd have really been speeding faster. He gives me a ticket anyway.

I'm livid, I'm going to fight it. My first court date was for some time in August. I had to be out of town for work, so I got it rescheduled. It was rescheduled for September. I also needed to be out of town again that same week (it was a regular monthly trip for a full week). I figure I'm pushing my luck getting it rescheduled again, so I reschedule the out of town work trip with my boss, so I can go fight this thing.

My court date was September 12, 2001. My trip out of town was to NYC. I was supposed to be in Manhattan on September 11, 2001. My boss was a really cool guy, he always planned things for us to do while I was up there. One of the things on the list - breakfast at Windows on the World at 1 World Trade Center. Might we have been there on that Tuesday, who knows.

When I showed up in court, I told the Court Clerk I didn't have time to stick around (there were about 100 students in there for indiscretions they'd had), I explained the situation, that I had to get back to the office to run things from Blacksburg for our NY office, and didn't have time to sit around all morning. The NYC office was in midtown, so everybody was safe, but they had no communication, and most couldn't get to work the next day.

I just asked her, "what's my fine and court costs," gave them a check. At that point, it wasn't worth fighting. It was probably why I was standing there. (edit - the check never cleared, the points never hit my driving record)
[Post edited by UEMcGill at 09/11/2019 10:39AM]