I fought the law...

... and, well, of course the law won, because it's ME. I follow the rules, which can be boring, but hey, it enables me to keep my corporate job and be a contributing member of society with an EXCELLENT credit score. Be jealous.

I digress.

Because I love you, my faithful Scooter Lass blog followers, this post is going to help keep you out of trouble... well, if you ride a 49cc scooter anyway. My birth landed on the cusp of Scorpio and Sagittarius, which makes for an interesting combination of traits -- it's the latter side that gets me into trouble all the time. (If you believe in that crap, anyway.) One of my nicknames isn't "Trouble" for nothin'! So, here I am, people ... taking one for the team, pretty much on a weekly -- if not daily -- basis. You're welcome.

There were this many - they
SWARMED ME! (I'm totally lying.)

Several weeks ago, I was riding Little Chaos home in rush hour traffic downtown on Lincoln (a very busy, three-lane, one-way city street for you out-of-towners). It's difficult enough to maneuver in traffic with a car during rush hour, much less a 49cc scooter, but I manage... and this particular day, I managed to get a ticket. A very stupid ticket: illegal right turn in a right-turn-only-when-blinking lane. I felt it was unsafe for me to turn at 9th when I got over, so I turned at 10th -- RIGHT IN FRONT OF A COP. And because I'm not devious and clever enough to pretend like I was going up on the sidewalk to park, of course the next thing I saw were the red and blue lights. Damn!

It's embarrassing enough sitting in a car pulled over by a cop... people driving by pointing and laughing at you (What? That doesn't happen to you? Huh.) as he/she takes two hours to write your ticket. But try sitting on your scooter, in your dorky helmet. There is absolutely NO way to look cool in that scenario, trust me.

So, let's talk about the ticket. The illegal right-turn was one thing, but then he asked me if I had insurance. From my knowledge at the time, I said, "No, Mr. Jerky Power-tripping Cop [<--- okay, I didn't say that, are you nuts?!], a 49cc scooter is not required to have insurance." He nodded and went back to his car for another five minutes, leading me to believe I knew my stuff. But no, when he came back, he imperiously told me there was a new law back in '10 (when I bought my scooter), that requires those with 49cc scooters to have insurance on them at all times. Seriously?! Yes, seriously. So, I gots me a double ticket -- slap no proof of insurance on, as well. Which means I get to go to court and pay court fines on top of ticket fines. Yay for me! (See, with the trouble-getting-into thing?)

Fortunately, Mr. DPD explained that as long as I bought insurance, the judge would most likely waive the fine. So, there's that. But I did want to make sure copper knew what he was talking about, so I looked it up... sure enough, the law was enacted on July 1, 2010. Double damn!

Now, I don't like to play the victim. I screwed up. My bad. And I try real hard not to be bitter when, every day on my commute home, I see d-bags riding that right-turn-only-when-blinking lane alllll the way down to its end, usually 10 miles over the speed limit. They are just obviously nowhere near Sagittarius on the Zodiac. Humph. But.... well, triple damn -- for good measure!

So, loyal readers, you can play chicken with the law and avoid insurance if you dare... you are much braver than I. But if you get caught, and I see you pulled over by a cop on the side of the road, I'm going to point and laugh at you -- and not just because of the dorky helmet. I warned you!

Scooter on, scooter peeps -- and try to stay out of trouble, okay?