Thank god for the police!
So, I'm sure some of you will be surprised to see me again. It's been forever since I was here, and that may be because I just don't care to share all of my life, as much of it is purely mundane, but this was too good to pass up.
The major change in my life lately is that I finally quit my job at Kids in Tune and got a new one at Gymboree. Big, big changes, as you can tell. I teach play classes (which isn't about teaching kids how to play, it's assisting development through play), and on the days when I don't have my classes I do administrative and retail stuff, like signing people up for classes and selling toys. It's a half-hour drive away, though. This was not great when I started and gas was at $3.50 a gallon, but prices have gone up a whole dollar in the two months that I've worked there, so now it costs me at least $15 and sometimes closer to $20. To this end, I've been taking BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit for the acronym-challenged), which is only a $7.90 round trip, and riding Anna's bike from the BART station to work. It's an hour BART ride and a half-hour bike ride, but it's also exercise, so the price and caloric decline are worth it.
At one point on this long uphill and downhill ride, there is a road without a bike lane; a sign informs the rider that he is allowed to use the sidewalk. It's a residential area with stop signs and crosswalks, and usually the only people I pass on this route are people out running in the morning or other bikers partaking of the city's good will. I've taken this route at least ten times round-trip, and I've never had any trouble except for the first time, when I managed to get lost in the suburbs, as anyone is apt to do.
Apparently the morning of the 25th was special, though, because I'm biking along the sidewalk as I have many times before, up and down and through crosswalks which are poorly prepared anyway (the slopes up and down from the sidewalk sometimes have lips, sometimes are at 45 degree angles, and are almost always less than conducive to biking), and I pass through Paseo Santa Cruz, the location of the Mormon geneology center where I first received my directions upon getting lost. I'm barely across the intersection, having carefully made sure no one was crossing across Valley, perpendicular to my path of intent, when I hear a short burst of quiet siren coming up on my left side from the roadway. I glance behind me, and there is a police officer in a patrol car driving up behind me.
I can see that he's looking through his windshield at me, so I apply my handbrakes and slow to a stop. He pulls up to the sidewalk, turns on his warning blinkers, and steps out of his car. "Is... uh... is everything all right?" I ask him in a vaguely stupefied manner as he steps over the foot and a half hedge between the road and the sidewalk.
He takes me in with a single glance, full of the self-righteousness with which all police officers seem to be graced, and says, "Is there a reason you ran that stop sign back there?"
For a moment I can do nothing but simply sit, lips opened slightly in a real-life version of a dropped jaw, and I finally manage to stutter out, "Um... no?"
He proceeds to tell me that I'm subject to all the rules of the road, just like any other vehicle; he calls it in to the dispatcher at the station, and even goes so far as to take my driver's license and run it through the system.
When he comes back from the driver's seat of his patrol car, he takes out his pad and proceeds to write out a "courtesy citation" for my moving violation, telling me that if I'm caught doing the same thing again, I'll receive an actual ticket for such a flagrant disregard for the rules.
I have to wonder if, as he squeezed the cloud of idiocy that surrounds his head back into the car, he felt a sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment. Another police officer who was jogging by as he was giving me the citation commented later as I biked by that it was "chicket shit." If even the other police officers are amazed by the absolute lack of neccessity for such a ticket, this stretches the boundaries of the ridiculousness of the police force. Office Lengel of the Pleasanton Police Force, badge number 266, I hope you are not a prime example of your fellows.
The major change in my life lately is that I finally quit my job at Kids in Tune and got a new one at Gymboree. Big, big changes, as you can tell. I teach play classes (which isn't about teaching kids how to play, it's assisting development through play), and on the days when I don't have my classes I do administrative and retail stuff, like signing people up for classes and selling toys. It's a half-hour drive away, though. This was not great when I started and gas was at $3.50 a gallon, but prices have gone up a whole dollar in the two months that I've worked there, so now it costs me at least $15 and sometimes closer to $20. To this end, I've been taking BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit for the acronym-challenged), which is only a $7.90 round trip, and riding Anna's bike from the BART station to work. It's an hour BART ride and a half-hour bike ride, but it's also exercise, so the price and caloric decline are worth it.
At one point on this long uphill and downhill ride, there is a road without a bike lane; a sign informs the rider that he is allowed to use the sidewalk. It's a residential area with stop signs and crosswalks, and usually the only people I pass on this route are people out running in the morning or other bikers partaking of the city's good will. I've taken this route at least ten times round-trip, and I've never had any trouble except for the first time, when I managed to get lost in the suburbs, as anyone is apt to do.
Apparently the morning of the 25th was special, though, because I'm biking along the sidewalk as I have many times before, up and down and through crosswalks which are poorly prepared anyway (the slopes up and down from the sidewalk sometimes have lips, sometimes are at 45 degree angles, and are almost always less than conducive to biking), and I pass through Paseo Santa Cruz, the location of the Mormon geneology center where I first received my directions upon getting lost. I'm barely across the intersection, having carefully made sure no one was crossing across Valley, perpendicular to my path of intent, when I hear a short burst of quiet siren coming up on my left side from the roadway. I glance behind me, and there is a police officer in a patrol car driving up behind me.
I can see that he's looking through his windshield at me, so I apply my handbrakes and slow to a stop. He pulls up to the sidewalk, turns on his warning blinkers, and steps out of his car. "Is... uh... is everything all right?" I ask him in a vaguely stupefied manner as he steps over the foot and a half hedge between the road and the sidewalk.
He takes me in with a single glance, full of the self-righteousness with which all police officers seem to be graced, and says, "Is there a reason you ran that stop sign back there?"
For a moment I can do nothing but simply sit, lips opened slightly in a real-life version of a dropped jaw, and I finally manage to stutter out, "Um... no?"
He proceeds to tell me that I'm subject to all the rules of the road, just like any other vehicle; he calls it in to the dispatcher at the station, and even goes so far as to take my driver's license and run it through the system.
When he comes back from the driver's seat of his patrol car, he takes out his pad and proceeds to write out a "courtesy citation" for my moving violation, telling me that if I'm caught doing the same thing again, I'll receive an actual ticket for such a flagrant disregard for the rules.
I have to wonder if, as he squeezed the cloud of idiocy that surrounds his head back into the car, he felt a sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment. Another police officer who was jogging by as he was giving me the citation commented later as I biked by that it was "chicket shit." If even the other police officers are amazed by the absolute lack of neccessity for such a ticket, this stretches the boundaries of the ridiculousness of the police force. Office Lengel of the Pleasanton Police Force, badge number 266, I hope you are not a prime example of your fellows.