Rave

Last week I went out for happy hour and parked my bike on the street between two cars. When I left the bar I had a $20 ticket for "Fail to Park Parallel" (that's what the ticket said, don't blame me for the meter-maid's grammar). In the 18+ years that I've been riding I've never heard of such a thing.

The bike was parked in a legal parallel parking space with the meter fed. My bike was backed in at about a 45 degree angle to the street with my back tire resting against the curb. This is the way you park a bike, and any biker worth his salt will tell you the same.

Naturally there was no chance I was paying the fine. I am prepared to spend whatever time or money is necessary to fight this ticket.

Yesterday I wrote a one-page letter to the city telling them what I thought about their analysis of my parking. The letter included three color 8.5" x 11" photos of my bike parked on the road along with the entire 97 page District of Colombia Motorcycle Operator's Manual, which I downloaded from the DMV website and printed. On page 20 of this document I highlighted the paragraph that describes how you should park at a "90 degree angle to the curb with your rear wheel touching the curb." I really love that the city has a fine that directly contradicts one of their own rules of the road.

What really chaps my ass about erroneous tickets like this is that the dumb-fuck-high-school-drop-out-shit-for-brains the city hires can pass out tickets at random without care or consequence and gets paid to do so, but we citizens have to use our personal time to defend ourselves against what essentially amounts to a guilty until proven innocent system.

I checked on the BLS website and learned that "parking enforcement officers" earn between $35,000 and $50,000 per year. I would like to see the dollar value of the tickets an average officer writes in a year and see if it covers their salaries, benefits, and vehicle costs. I bet the city doesn't even break even, it probably costs the city money to enforce parking.

No sense whipping that dead horse any further.

Yesterday ME sent me a text and invited me to go see a DJ named Paul Oakenfold "spin" at the 9:30 Club. I Googled this guy and turns out he's a pretty famous DJ that plays kind of heavy trance shit, which is great and all, but not necessarily for a first date. Also, I know what my strong-points are and they don't include techno-glow-stick dancing.

I called Chuck and explained what I was invited to and he said "Nice! I know what you'll be doing tonight!". I said "What, because I have no idea?". He said "You're going to get all fucked up on X then have buck-wild sex with that chick until the sun comes up [paraphrasing here, he went on and on]". I said "Aren't I a little old to be doing extacy. Also, you just described best case scenario. More likely I'll take some drug, freak out, and spend the rest of the night locked in a stall in the men's room playing with a roll of toilet paper. Worst case scenario is I wind up in the ER with an adrenaline needle shoved in my heart. And drugs or no drugs, you've seen me dance, it's not the best way for me to impress a girl" He sounded genuinely bummed and said "Man, why do you have to be that way? Always so negative."

I have to admit that I thought long and hard about what to do and almost went solely because I knew I would get a great story out of it. Either I would have had mind blowing sex or been completely humiliated and never talk to ME again. I was prepared for the worst just for the story. However, in the end I pussed out and said I couldn't go. I opted for a much safer fist date of drinks on Saturday night.

I met a bartender last Saturday night and got her number so last night I gave her a call. The phone rang a bunch of times and I was expecting it to go to VM then I heard her pick up. Fuck, who does that, who answers calls from numbers they don't recognize! I had my message all planned in my head, then she goes and fucks it all up by answering the goddamn phone.

For all my bitching I kind of like that she answered because there aren't any games. We talked for a short time then made plans to get together Sunday. This chick seems really wild.