Tuesday April 17th, 2012 – Tucson, AZ/Windlake, WI
Today brought the reality home with a vengeance of why I need to get off the road. I was up by 3:30am to make a 4am taxi to the airport. As nice as the club was to me this weekend, I couldn’t in good conscience ask anyone to give me a ride at that hour. I sucked it up and paid for the cab.
My flight was at 6:30am, but I wanted to make sure I made it and I did. Then I had a four hour layover in Denver that I used to go over my notes and prepare for life after Sunday when my big charity event is done. That’s been taking my focus lately, but after that life will be a clean slate.
Twelve hour travel days have long lost their luster, even though I do get to fly a lot more often now than when I started. I didn’t fly at all for several years. I remember how big league it felt the first time I flew to a gig, but that thrill has long passed. Now I dread it, even though it saves time.
Had I driven to Tucson and back, I would have been a lot more worn out than I already was as I got off the plane in Milwaukee at 4:15pm. I had an appointment in traffic court at 6pm to fight a speeding ticket I got a few weeks ago. That’s how the timing worked out, and I had to go do it.
I hadn’t seen my cousin Brett in a while, and he’s owed me dinner for months so I called to ask him if he wanted to join me for what I thought would be a short stint in court and we’d be on our way. I have plenty of experience with small town kangaroo courts, and I thought I knew what to expect. I could not have been more wrong. It turned out to be an experience I won’t soon forget.
The judge was some flaming wackadoo with a bad comb over who liked to hear himself babble on about anything and everything from his former job at Kohl’s food store to his time in Vietnam to the old Ford LTD he used to own as a teenager. Brett and I just looked at each other and it felt like we were on the set of a practical joke hidden camera show. We’d never seen anything like it.
This idiot would NOT shut up, and it caused the evening to go way longer than it needed to for all of us. I don’t know if he was getting paid by the hour, but he was surely pissing away a ton of tax dollars with his incessant yammering on. It was funny for the first hour and a half, but then it was maddening to have to sit and watch him ramble to everyone about completely useless tripe.
We got there at 6pm, and were trapped in our own little corner of hell until almost 8. Neither of us was thrilled, and then I had to meet with the prosecutor who was a complete wank pole on top of all of it. He had an attitude as greasy as his hair, and he was NOT about to cut anyone slack.
I watched as one duck after the next lined up and got reamed by these two slippery snakes, and we all knew nobody was going to catch any breaks tonight. I finally got my turn to stand in front of the babbling judge and did my best to make my point how insane I thought the situation was.
Everyone’s ears perked up and we had some heated words. I still was found guilty after I plead no contest, and I have 60 days to pay my fine. What a scam. It’s a money making speed trap, and there’s nothing I or the rest of us could do about it. This was a circus, with the clowns in charge.
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