katster | bloody folsom (Reply)

Actually, the word in my head is an alliterative adjective with the city in the subject line, but meh. We’ll use that as the subject.

I was down in Folsom tonight for a NaNoWriMo write-in. I had a good time hanging out at the local borders with a quite a crowd of the local Nano folks, and while I didn’t get as much done at this write-in as I have at others, I still got my goal wordcount for the day and made it so that I’m right on target with the bare minimum, just as we head into the Veteran’s Day weekend and the 11K challenge. (Somebody suggested writing 11K words over the holiday weekend last year. I thought it was a great idea and am going to do it this year.)

But when I left Borders, I found a white envelope plastered to my car. Sure enough, I had a lovely present from the Folsom Police’s Parking Division in the form of a parking ticket. I mean, to be fair, my front plate has been off my car since my sister got in a collision that knocked it loose. (The plate has been in the trunk ever since.) However, that collision was, geez, four or five years ago when Jill was in her first tour at Davis, and while she and I have gotten three or four different tickets in that car, nobody had whacked us for the front plate being missing yet.

Until I went to bloody frickin’ Folsom.

It ticks me off a little. First of all, the car was parked in the space engine first, which means they had to get out of whatever vehicle they were doing their patrols in and walk around the car to see that the front plate was missing. Two, it was a busy Friday night in what was a parking lot for nearly a dozen big box stores, which almost means that they had to be deliberately looking for cars to ticket. And if you’re that desperate for revenue that you’re deliberately going around to see which cars you can find in minor violation of the law, well…

All it said to me is that Folsom is so hungry for money that ticketing parking violations on a Friday night seemed like a good idea. Alright, fine. I am in violation; I’ll pay the stupid fine. That said, I’m not entirely keen on coming back to Folsom because the first real time I spent in that fair city, this is what happens. It creates somewhat of an unfriendly environment, if you follow my drift.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to go back to Folsom. I know next time, the plate will be on in some fashion or another, so I won’t have to worry about getting another ticket for the same violation, but still…

It just sucks.

I’ll stop whining now.

Originally published at retstak.org. You can comment here or there.