Expensive Decision

Our trip to Virginia from the Big Pine Key back in early May was not as uneventful as we thought. As you know, we have our mail forwarded to us once a week from our mail forwarding address in Pensacola, FL., and it is sent out on Fridays for us to receive by Tuesday of the following week. The last mail package that we received last Tuesday had a surprise envelope from the City of Coral Gables, FL. It contained a beautiful picture of our fifth wheel traveling through a red light at a busy intersection in Coral Gables. Along with the beautiful picture was a notice that we had until June 6th to fork over $158!

I remember the intersection and I remember going through the light. When you're towing 18,000 pounds of trailer and the light turns yellow, you have to decide whether you slam on the brakes and dislodge everything in the trailer and break who knows what as it falls on the floor, or you can take a chance and continue through the intersection. I took the chance. If it were possible for me to contest the violation I would probably do it. It is almost impossible to stop that kind of load within about 50 feet of any intersection while traveling at 30 MPH. But, I can't very well appear in a traffic court in Coral Gables while living in Virginia. That is one reason we try to avoid city traffic whenever possible. In this case, there were no freeways between Key Largo and the spot of the violation which was just before entering I-95. It was an expensive decision.

Our weekend starts today and we are watching more devastation from tornadoes on TV. There is a front expected to come through here over the next couple days, so we don't know what our plans will be to enjoy the time off. It has been some kind of year for tornadoes and we are within a tornado risk area, so that makes us a little nervous. Maybe we will stay close to home over the next 2 days...