Its raining speeding tickets

Yes, I got a ticket in the long weekend.

I and my family had been to Pittsburgh which is around 8 hours away by road. The main purpose of the trip was so my wife and my mom-in-law could visit the Venkatachalapathy temple in Penn Hills. So, in that sense, the trip was successful and we had an excellent time at the temple.

On the way back on July 4, we were making excellent time on the road and we were hoping to reach home an hour earlier than expected (around 1 AM). The roads were completely empty and I was doing 90 on 65 mph limit stretches. I mentioned to my wife that she should warn me if she sees any cop cars. She pulled my leg saying that she would warn me soon after the cop finsihed clocking me on his radar. Lo and behold.....five minutes later, I get pulled over by this cop who clocked me doing 87. Too bad I was the first car on that stretch of road coz there were like 5 or 6 cars right behind me all travelling at the same speed.

So, after a long lecture, I got a ticket for around $170.....ouch!

And after that incident I slowed down and started following the speed limits precisely. An unwanted side-effect of this was that our new estimated time of arrival kept slipping....1:30 AM....1:45 AM...2:00 AM...etc.

The worst part was that around 1 AM it started raining cats and dogs. I have never been outside in such heavy rain in my entire life, leave alone driving a car. My speed which had dropped to the 60s from the 90s due to the speeding ticket, had now dropped to the 20s due to the rain and poor visibility. Many of the roads were getting flooded and even my brand new all-wheel-drive Sport Utility Vehicle was having a hard time with control.

After around half hour of painstaking driving, we were disappointed once again to see a cop car, this time blocking the road in front of us. I took my umbrella out and stepped out to talk with the officer to ask him what was going on. He explained that the road ahead was too treacherous and that I would not be allowed to go further. When I asked him for directions, he just shrugged his shoulders and yelled for me to go back. We figured he had probably been pulled away from his Krispy Creme donuts and Budweiser beer at his warm & dry office desk to be in such a foul mood....

Anyway, thanks to this little invention called the GPS, we were able to take a long winded diversion and find our way back home.

It was 3 AM before we finally reached home. All of us were so very wet, tired and sleepy. I dried myself and quickly brewed a steaming hot cup of Folgers coffee before retiring for the night.

It had been an eventful, productive and fun fourth.