Monday, April 19

Here is a painting I worked on today. I threw the boats in there as an after thought. Not quite sure if I want to keep them as is or not. Tomorrow I can look at it with a fresh eye and see.

So today I had my day in traffic court. Way back in February one cloudy day I was driving back from Alta with Victor and Lina in the car. Just minding my own business following a line of traffic zipping down the hill, through the light and keeping their speed along the flat section of road.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw him, just parked there by the gravel pit. He pulled out behind me since I was the last in the long line. The light turned red ahead of us and he just waited there behind me, no lights flashing. I wondered if maybe, just perhaps he was going to let it slide. Yeah right! The light turned green and traffic moved forwards. Thats when the flashing red and blue lights came on behind me. I pulled over and asked what was wrong?

He looked at me with a concerned expression "You really don't know buddy, you were going fifteen over!"

Yeah, I was guilty as hell, no point arguing with a radar gun. But still I was hoping that ignorance would at least make him go easy on me..........that didn't get me far. He just asked how the skiing was and told me to sign the ticket on the doted line and if I so desired, I could appear before the court to get it off my driving record. I had a ticket from last year and figured that would be just the right excuse for the insurance company to raise the rate!

Today was the judgment day. I could have paid the $90 fine and be done with it all, but then I figure that it might be worth the effort to see if I could get it reduced. I found out that was just never going to happen. They had about twelve individuals, all sitting and waiting in a small court room. Everybody there for the same reason...speeders!

The woman in charge, or acting judge walked over to the blackboard and explained to all present that they had three choices. "Not Guilty", which meant making a court date in the summer and most likely would result in you paying ten times the amount of the fine.........that seemed like a no win situation to me.

"Guilty", meant you just pay the fine, some other court fee and it would all go on your record. Why you would ever, show up there for that option is beyond me. Unless you enjoy paying an extra court fee. I was already given the choice of just sending the payment in my mail.

Their third option was something in between, which basically stated that you had to get your ass in there for their traffic school. I went for that, since they offer it on-line. The fee was basically twice what the ticket was, but I figure at least the insurance company can't raise any anything if they don't know about it.

Richard Boyer