Until I got home from work tonight and took a look at the day's mail, I'd completely forgotten about the morning of May 27th. Thankfully, the Automated Traffic Enforcement Unit of Montgomery County was thoughtful enough to send me a reminder of what I was doing that morning.
Now that I look back, I remember it pretty well. For the second straight weekend morning, we'd gotten up early for our 6:30AM departure to the Poolesville Polo Grounds (remember them?) in beautiful Montgomery County. There's no easy way to get there. It's a 30-mile trip through a series of country roads, broken up by a 5-mile stretch of MD-124 that takes you past office parks, strip malls, and the occassional town house development.
On both of those early weekend mornings, that 5-mile stretch was largely empty. Empty, that is, of everything but red lights. That's right. Despite the fact that there was virtually no traffic on that lonely stretch of MD-124, I think we caught every one of the nearly two dozen traffic lights that must have lined that stretch of road. With each successive red light that we hit, my sighing and carrying on grew worse. Looking back, it's kind of surprisign Kim and Jay didn't throw me out of the car. Finally, we made it to Darnestown and the lights were gone. Hallelujah, I thought.
Little did I know that Montgomery County had a new trick up its sleeves for me -- speed monitoring cameras. Yep, they caught me. That's definitely our minivan with the dents in the rear and the Thunder bumper sticker staring out at me from my mail pile.
I feel completely set up by Montgomery County. It's like they purposely got me aggravated with all those stupid, poorly timed traffic lights on MD-124. Then, when they knew my patience was exhausted, they stopped with all the traffic lights and let me get my hopes up on Darnestown Road, with its wide open vistas and broad shoulders. Who would have ever expected a 30 mile per hour speed limit?
I'll write you your check, Montgomery County. I don't really have a choice, do I? But, I'm going to take some time to think about what to put in the memo field. There are a couple things I'm considering. I'll leave it to your imagination.
