My day started early. Not too early but early as I left the house by 7am. Hey that is early for me when I am at home. I headed toward town as I wanted to fill up with gas before heading off to Enid. I almost made it by the SpudNut shop but somehow the steering wheel turned and I landed in front? Hum… guess that means I need to get another of those Hot Sausage rolls for breakfast. Well I went in and got my sausage roll and got back to the jeep and promptly hammered my knee into the door handle trying to get in and you know how that feels when you hit your “crazy bone”… man that set me on fire… and still hurts some now… maybe I was not supposed to stop? too late now..
Ok got that taken care of and made it on to the Murphy gas station. Still rubbing my knee and wondering if it was going to swell up like a toad, cause it sure was smarting… a lot smarter than me I guess… I Got filled and put all the details in the log book and headed off for Enid. I took the north route through Perry.
The Road construction east of Perry must have reached a point of …. I don’t know what… but they sure weren’t doing a lot of work? oh well not my problem. When I got into Enid I was very careful to watch my speed. They are known for speed traps on the east side of town. Although in the Jeep is it not too likely that I will be speeding. Anyway, I get to the Railroad crossing just before Grand street and there is a train on the tracks going South… at about 2mph… we sat there for a really long time. I noticed a police car behind me but didn’t give it much thought. Just as the train get through and we are about the start moving… he turns on his lights… now what the hell is this for, we have set here for over 15 minutes and he waits till we can move and then wants to pull me over?
I pull into the open area … before we get across the tracks… and he comes up and asks if I can explain “when I ran you tag it comes up with an expiration of May and your tag shows December – can I see your registration”?” Well I do not remember if I have a copy of the registration in the jeep but start to fumble for it then the light comes on… hey I have the original tag in the back, just like the stupid state of Oklahoma requires, would that work? “he says sure that is ok” so I get out, open the back, which means I have to let the bike carrier down, fold up the back seat, dig around in the under seat tool area and pull out the original tag… it has the May and 2012 tags on it and I go on to explain to him…
If Oklahoma would get it’s act together and when you purchase a “special tag” they would replace your old one with the new one the dates would all be fine but for some odd reason they make us keep both the original, and it must be in the car, as well as allow us to put on the special tag… just happens that mine are Ham call plates so I guess he had no idea that those funny set of letters were a special call and not a special name… What would WD0AJG even spell out? I am not even going to try that one… Anyway he was young and said it was the first he had run a special plate and didn’t realize that the dates could be totally different. I am thinking now that keeping the original tags Is ok as when you sell you need to put them back on? I think but they should adjust the dates to all be the same?
Well once that was settled, he did state he was sorry for wasting my time and I said that was ok… I then tried to get my stuff put back together and the seat back in place and just as I finish up another train is crossing the street headed the other way, doing 2mph… it looked like we might be there for ??? another 15 minutes or more… I had not even gotten back on the road when he , who got caught as well, pulls an illegal turn around in the right hand lane to get back around the corner and head the other way… I took the side road to the underpass a few blocks north and went under the train and on my way west…
After I left I am wondering why he even ran my tag? If he didn’t have reason to suspect something then I think he may have been over stepping his authority? Anyway I was also thinking that with all this bad happening so early that my day was going to go to Hell anyway… to the contrary it was not so bad after that point. I stopped to see Dad , we had the meeting and they deemed him fit to check out on Monday next week so he gets to move back to his independent life, we met with an aide that will be able to help him for a few weeks and check on him every morning to make sure he is taking his medicine and getting the things done he needs… so the rest of the day was ok.
I got home early and did some reading and setting on the back deck again and rubbing my knee, it still hurts, and thinking about how the day went.
The only pictures today were of the moon – not as dramatic as the full moon a few days ago but still interesting… since it was taken at about 8am…
And that was how it went… REX