Neons

This is the full story of what happened. Nothing here is made up, the quotes are close to exact.

I was driving back from Dublin Iceland after playing some hockey and skating around. I didn't want to take the freeway and felt like doing a little bit of night driving, so I was taking the long way home, down Foothill to West Las Positas, and then down Hopyard to cut through Birdland at Crestline. As I was coming up to the light at Hopyard, my iPod fell on the floor. The left turn light was red so I stopped to find it.

I'm going, "ahhh where did it go..." because I wanted to change the song. Not able to see it on the black carpet, I turned on my neons. What you need to know here is that my interior and exterior neons are linked to the same switch, so when the inside lights up so does the outside, and visa-versa. I have been planning to wire one switch for inside and one for out, but I hadn't gotten around to it yet, so at this point all of my neons are on.

When I bent down to find the iPod, there were no cars anywhere in sight. When I sat back up, there were two obnoxious spotlights and some very pretty red and blue roof strobes blasting me in the face off my mirrors. Before I even saw the damn cop, I had already turned the lights off because I found the iPod, so to him it looked like I was trying to hide them.

Pulled around the corner and off to the side of the road. Dude walks up, maglite searing my eyes.

"Know why I pulled you over?"

"Assume it would be the lights. Wasn't doing much speeding at that red light."

"You know those are illegal in the state of California?"

"No, actually. I bought this car from a police officer, so I figured it was safe to assume they were legal."

He looked very confused. He could not imagine a fellow police officer doing such a horrible thing as installing neons on a car. This was outrageous. I continued my sympathy-seeking ramble:

"I also did a pretty intensive search through the California Vehicle Codes, but wasn't able to find anything, really, because they're written in Finnish...no normal person can read those without getting a headache."

He laughed. This was good.

"I wouldn't use them on-road, but I've been trailed by several Pleasanton Police squad cars before without being pulled over."

I knew why this guy pulled me over while the others hadn't. I give him credit, a tuner with neons driving around at 1:30 in the morning on a weekday when there are no other cars on the road would look suspicious to me if I were on patrol.

"Okay, well I'm going to need your license and registration, it's just going to be a fix-it ticket, no points on your record. You got anything illegal on you?"

"No. Except the neons, apparently."

I think he realized at this point that I wasn't a drug dealer, a serial rapist, a drunk, or a street racer. I know this because it only took him five to ten minutes to write me up. When cops are pissed at you, they take as long as they can, especially when you're in a hurry. Plus, when he ran my license there wouldn't have been anything on the record, so he didn't need to file through hundreds of offenses, like some of you have. A second officer had pulled up, because in Pleasanton, you need at two squad cars to write a fix-it ticket. So my neons had, at that point, attracted a quarter of the active patrol. He walked back over.

"Hey turn those things back on for a second."

The newly arrived cops were now enjoying a light show while I sat there wishing I could strangle them, but I didn't need assault on an officer on my record so I just kept the show going.

"Do they change color?"

Okay, now I'm ready to get out and backhand you.

"I'll sell 'em to you for two hundred...you can put them on the Crown Vic...it'll keep the drunks entertained at least..."

One of the other ones was talking now:

"Hey, sounds good to me, it is tax dollars you know..."

This is ridiculous. I'm sitting in my car, at two in the morning now, while four cops are admiring my neons, and writing me a ticket for them at the same time. And they're considering buying them off me. The first guy walked back over.

"Okay, here you go, you're going to need to get this...what happened to the inside of your car?"

Hm. I forgot that I had removed most of my interior paneling to repaint it, so the inside looks totally ghetto. It's pretty much just the gauges and my stereo deck, with some of the dash board still attached. I told him I was having it re-done, because "...if anything were stolen it would've been my deck and that's still there..."

"...uh, okay...well take this to the Pleasanton Police Department or flag one of us down once you get the problem fixed and we'll sign if for you. Then you can take it to the clerk at the Courthouse."

The "problem" fixed, like my neons are like a blown taillight or something. Screw you. The only problem here is that you have too much time on your hands, and you're giving me a ticket for being awesome.

At this point, a white Cadillac drove by in the opposite direction, and the face of the driver could only belong to Blake. Sure enough, my phone rings 15 seconds later. I cancelled the call. Kept calling me until around 3AM, but I turned my phone off. What the hell are the chances of that?

Anyway, being a suck-up, I thanked the officer for my ticket.

"Okay, thank you sir, I'll do that. Have a good evening."

The caravan of cops drove off, and I went home. Fast forward 12 hours.

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Now it's mid-afternoon the same day. I spent about 10 minutes cutting the wires and unscrewing the bulbs, and I'm sure it will take about four times that long to put the damn things back on. Oh, yes, they're going back on.

I drive to the Police Station and walk in, handing my paperwork to the lady at the front desk. She did not seem to know what to check for, because I don't imagine they get very many 24003CVC violations.

"Purple lights?"

"Purple? They were blue. He wrote purple? Oh....they were neon lights, you know, like underglow, running lights, whatever?"

We walked outside.

"This yours, the sporty lookin' white one? Okay, just go ahead and show me the lights."

"Uh...I took them off."

"Why'd you do that?"

Oh my God. She was not getting it. For some reason, she was looking for the lights, to make sure they were fixed I guess.

"Well...that was the violation, to have the lights on the car. I took them off, they're gone."

"Ohhh, okay."

She signed the paper. She didn't even look under the car, or under the hood, just took my word for it. This really pissed me off, because I didn't even have to cut the damn bulbs off, I could've just left them on and she never would have known the difference. What a waste of my time. I hate the government.

Fast forward 24 hours.

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I drive to the courthouse, everything is signed, supposedly. Park in the parking lot, walk past the 15 Bail Bonds trucks, all of which are Tacomas with bad vinyls and 19" Rockstar rims. I threw all of my junk in a bucket and walked through the metal detector. The security guy there grabbed my keys. I was like, "why is he looking at...oh shit."

Ever seen my keychain? It has a .223 bullet casing on it, pre-fired and filled with a fake but very realistic copper round in the top. I almost didn't make it into to building.

"Yeah, uh...that's fake, it's a keychain...see the firing pin mark? It's been fired...I probably should have taken that off..."

He let me in. There were about 20 cops sitting on a bench, waiting for different trails. That's my idea of making a living, getting paid government salary with pension to sit on a bench in an air conditioned building. I walked up to the window and gave the guy the paper, who said he didn't think it could be processed right away because I had received it less than 36 hours before. When I threatened to rip out his tonsils, he went in the back and processed it. No way was I about to leave and come back later...Courthouses are my least favorite places ever, next to DMV offices and hospitals.

I paid him ten bucks and left. End of story.

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And now I'm putting my neons back on, but I'm not going to use them unless it's an ego emergency. You can still notice me by the StreetGlow® decals on the back windows, black 18" rims and the fat dent in my back right quarter panel.

Neons will never die.

Current Mood: Aggravated

Listening To: "Limelight" by Rush