I was coming back from the weeklong restoration camp at Mammoth Cave. Most people, after their Saturday education trip, were spending the night in the bunks before driving home. But I had a much longer drive, and didn�t want to blow the entire weekend getting home. So I went straight from the cave to my car without changing clothes (we caved in street clothes), and was driving all night to get home Sunday morning.
At an interchange on I-81 in Maryland, I blew by a white car pulled off in the left breakdown lane. Uh oh. I normally tried to slow down before passing white cars on the side of the road, but the interchange blocked my view of it until I was right there.
Sure enough, those red and blue lights started flashing.
I�ve only gotten one speeding ticket, at a speed trap in Bayonne. I got flagged the second I went 60 MPH in a 40. Twenty miles over the limit is the magic speed: fines in most areas double at this speed, from about $100 to about $200. If a cop or trooper is looking just to raise revenue, all he does is hit the people doing 20 MPH over the limit.
The ticket comes with several points on your insurance. I went to Bayonne to plead mine. Immediately I got asked if I wanted to plead guilty to a no points offense. That was what I was hoping for: they still get roughly the same amount of money from me, but I don�t pay an extra two grand in premiums.
Bayonne is twenty minutes away from me, and I still missed a day of work to fight it. Fighting a ticket in Maryland would be much more difficult, possibly unfeasible.
For that reason, I try not to go twenty MPH over the limit, especially driving out of state. The speed of traffic in any given area is usually about 15 MPH over the limit, so I�m normally safe sticking with the crowd. But at 4:10 in the morning, there is no crowd. You ARE the speed of traffic And I had just crossed into Maryland, so I had no idea what the local speed limit was.
A young state trooper, about my age, walked to my window. I handed him the standard stuff: license, registration, insurance.
�You were doing 75 in a 60,� he said. This was great news. Only fifteen over the limit! This guy wasn�t seeing me as a ATM, he was just checking to see if I was drunk or had a corpse in the trunk. �Where are you coming from?�
�I�m coming from Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We just did a restoration week there.� I try to be friendly when I get pulled over: cops don�t give many tickets to friendly people.
�A what?�
Here�s where I had my chance to win the trooper over with civic pride. I explained a little bit about the creosoted wood in Mammoth, how it was running off into the water and poisoning the cave life and groundwater, and how we were hauling it out.
He seemed legitimitely interested, although most of the questions he asked were if I had been drinking or smoking pot recently. He went to his cruiser, then came back, stuck his head in the window, and asked me one or two more camp questions. I had a feeling it wasn�t because of cave conservation.
He went back to the cruiser again, his partner got out, and the young guy came up again. He asked again about if there had been any pot smoking at the camp. I said no, truthfully (one of the few times I could say that about a caving event).
�Here�s the thing. We smell pot in the car. Do you know what it might be? Were people smoking it around the car?�
�No, the car was locked all week. I didn�t even use it.�
�Do you mind if we search the car?�
At times like these I break with unofficial liberal policy of protesting every unwarranted police investigation. I had nothing to hide; I�ve never smoked pot in my life. Being a cop is a tough, dangerous job, and I can make his life easier while getting my butt home quicker. So I got out of the car, and the partner began digging through a very messy car.
There were maps, brochures, fast food napkins and dirty cave gear throughout the car. When he popped the trunk, I could almost see the stink lines coming from my cave tub. Come to think of it, I wasn�t the picture of sanitation either. I had dirt from two states ago on me, I was wearing the same shirt for four days now, and my jeans were more khaki than blue.
Standing on the side of the road, I talked caves some more with the young trooper. He seemed amazed that people do this with their vacation time (the caving, not the volunteering).
I tried to be more helpful. �You know, I�ll take a breathalyser, pee in a cup, whatever you�ve got...�
�No, we�re just trying to find out what it is.� This might have been acting, but he seemed solely interested in finding out what this funk was.
After some poking around, the partner declared my car �clean.� I got off with just a warning. There was no finger pointing, but I think I knew where that smell was coming from.
I recommend attending these cleanups, but be warned: moving creosoted wood will make you smell like pot funk.