Oh, well.


I really liked my Jeep. It was (well, it still is, technically mine) a '91 Sahara, with the 4.0 liter straight six, and a three-speed automatic. 140,000 miles on the odometer, with only two water pumps, one brake rotor, one convertible top, and one driveshaft ever requiring replacement during sixteen years of motoring. Not counting the tires, brake pads, spark plugs, fluids and other expendables. Or the exhaust system held together by hose clamps for the past five years or so (for some reason, California only insisted on one smog test ever, rather than the eight they'd normally have scheduled in that time).

Ah, but things come and go. Like my Jeep. Gone in a manner similar to (and related to), but less upsetting than, my once spotless driver's license. Cops took 'em. The license was an outright theft by a despicable gang of motherfuckers who collectively call themselves the City Government of Santa Cruz, specifically, the police department, the district attorney's office, a judge, and a public "defender". All told, they committed somewhere in the neighborhood of half a dozen (a very conservative estimate) felonies in the course of their attempt to hang an undeserved, unjust misdemeanor on me.

Naturally, they've not paid for their crimes, nor are they likely ever to do so. But their real goal, to extort several thousand dollars from me, has so far netted them less than the cost of the two months' effort it took them to concoct t a fabric of lies good enough that they were willing to try to pass it off as the truth, in order to pressure me into a plea bargain (as my "counselor" explained, my two choices were guilty, or no contest). Too bad I never got around to paying the fine or attending the driver's re-education classes I'd agreed to under duress; my nearly-fifty-year-old memory is likely to blame for that oversight, if I recall correctly (I stiffed the public pretender for her $25 fee intentionally, damn it!).

But they took my license and hung a warrant on me (not valuable enough, so far, to encourage the local cops to do anything more than make me promise to get my own ass back to Santa Cruz's lovely criminal (yes it is!) court system), and permanently soured my attitude about licenses, cops, courts, and yes folks, even lawyers.

Especially prosecutors. I mean, Bush fired eight of those vermin and people are pissed off at him, but not because he didn't fire all of them? For some other reason? Boy, some things just puzzle me...

Anyway. A few hours ago, the inevitable happened. I was on my way back to my current luxurious abode, a camper (my ex-wife is letting me live in it) in Sunnyvale. As I was departing Mountain View, a police car pulled out of a grocery store parking lot and followed me. I thought I was in the clear at the next stoplight (the cop was preparing to make a u-turn ) but when the light turned green, he pulled from the left-turn lane to back behind me, and turned on the lights. I guess that since there were no other cars on El Camino Real at the time, the cop had decided to run my license plate for fun.

Damn. It seems that the Jeep's registration expired back in 2003 (it's been that long?), and since my driver's license has been suspended for nearly three years, what's the point of bothering with insurance when you have no other official paper? Got some now, though - a ticket and an invitation to pay a visit to my pals in Santa Cruz. Yay!

And a tow yard has "my" Jeep - for at least the next thirty days. Then I get to decide if I can afford the enormous ransom it'll take to buy it back, so that I can, perhaps, resume playing the "try to avoid losing your Jeep" game. Which has certainly been a blast so far...