Case Dismissed!

You may recall that about a month and a half ago Vivian and I drove over a curb and knocked off the front header pipe on my car. If you don't remember that you may also remember me posting that I was driving a different car. Well - here's the whole story, now that it's resolved!

Without a front header pipe my car was making a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad noise. One morning I had to be to work for a 7:30 meeting and got pulled over at the butt crack of dawn. The cop gave me a ticket for a bad muffler (after not writing me for a couple other things...) and told me to "take care of that god-awful noise." Which of course made me angry - did he think I LIKED driving the car like that? In any case at that point the part was ordered and I was just waiting for it to come in from the auto parts warehouse. Which I don't think is anything like Santa's warehouse. The part came. Dave and his friend Jeff fixed it - without needing the part actually - and last night I had to go to court because the ticket the officer gave me required that I appear before a magistrate.

So I went. I was really impressed with the patience of this magistrate - and that made me hopeful. He sat and asked people questions and they gave him sometimes heartfelt explanations and sometimes crap. It was amazing how after listening to even a couple people it was fairly easy to tell the difference. When it was my turn I had to plead guilty (I mean the muffler was broken when I got pulled over) and then told the magistrate the same story I just told you. And he said "Because of the circumstances I'm going to dismiss the charges. You're free to go." I said "Thank you sir" and left. Woohoo!

So in retrospect...don't drive over curbs! It can cause bunches of trouble :)