Four months ago, Jonathan and I were driving back to San Antonio after a lovely 10 day vacation. Interstate 10. Years and years of travel on that road and I still feel ambivalent about it. As if driving alongside semi-trucks at 80 miles an hour with a summer cascade of bugs peppering the windshield wasn't stressful enough, one must mind the speed traps and sneaky little coppers tired of the dead-deer roundup, ready and eager to stretch their legs and pass out citations for the slightest infraction.
More than halfway to SA, we were making pretty good time, and I'll admit I felt a little guilty we weren't already in Jon's apartment, relaxing, having a beer, watching Futurama... No, I had insisted that we stop in El Paso -briefly- on the way back home from New Mexico. After all, it was on the way, and I wanted to see my parents and abuelita Lola. It just seemed like such a shame not to, as I don't see my family very often and we were within such close range.
But now, about five hours outside of El Paso, with night quickly approaching, I was disappointed to see we'd have to spend the next three hours driving through darkness, battling poor road illumination, night blindness, fatigue, all the while being vigilant for suicidal deer and other unseen wildlife. I wanted to take advantage of the daytime 80 mph speed limit when the ambiguous hour arrived. You know, that time between dusk and proper night, when one is unsure of which speed limit to follow: Day, 80 mph or Night, 65 mph? Well, what technically constitutes night? And does dusk fit in to that ? These are questions I had never really asked myself, until it was time to rationalize and justify my speed to the officer that had just pulled me over. Although I really do believe he lied about my speed, regardless of whether it was considered day or night, I still got slapped with a speeding ticket in the wonderful hellhole of Kimble County.
