CARLESS TRAFFIC TICKET

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Join Date 02/2004

CARLESS TRAFFIC TICKET

On Friday July 28th Annie and I set out for a bike trip in which both our spirits and the temperature was near record high. (don't worry, the rest of the story won't go on like this) We were on the Paul Bunyan trail trying to explore other parts of the trail and towns we hadn't explored yet.
We were moving quite swiftly when we came to Nisswa but opted not to stop there as we had a fairly lengthy tourist-trap experience there about a month before. We then came to Pequot Lakes (about 15 miles from our starting point) and decided that we'd go up one more town and then come back to Peqout for lunch.

So we made it up to Jenkins to tack on another 6 mile round trip and headed back to find the lunch spot in Peqout (hey that rhymes) that my grandmother had recommended. We got back to Peqout and got off the trail to look for a spot to park our bikes. We rode down the main drag (if there is such a thing in that town) and I was looking for a nice shady spot to lock up. Finding nothing I stopped at the end of the "drag" and Annie said she saw a rack right by the restaurant we were looking for, a rack that, if I had seen earlier may have prevented what soon follows.

I take off a little ahead of Annie and arrive at a 4-way stop. I'm turning left to go back up the "drag" and a truck is approaching the 4-way appearing to want to go straight. I see that I will beat the truck to the 4-way so I signal my left turn and coast through the stop sign. Soon after I hear an unfamiliar honk behind me and looked back to see a squad car. Thinking that I was in the way I moved a bit over to the right and kept pedaling. Again the squad car honked at me in its very own special squad car way and I went over to the curb and stopped to see what was going on. "You don't think you need to obey traffic laws?" Are the first words that came out of one of the most stereotypical handlebar-mustache-wearing cops I've seen in a long time.
To which I say "Oh, the stop sign, well I was ahead of that truck so I figured I might as well go through." "Yeah, you blew right through it. You have an ID on you?" "Yes sir," I get out in somewhat disbelief as Annie graciously takes my bike from me to go lock it up at the rack. "Do you have a clean driving record within the last year?" "Yeah, my driving record has always been clean." "Well, if it's clean I can give you a county citation, if it's not I'll give you a state citation." "Ummm, okay," since he didn't explain to me what the difference was. So there I am standing curbside waiting in the 90 degree heat while Mr. Copstache takes his time sitting in his tax-payer-powered air-conditioned squad until we finally comes out with my license and a ticket for $60 for running a stop sign...on my bike.

"I could've given you a state citation for $127." I may have been polite, but I didn't thank him for his charity.

I decided I wanted to get this over with right away so since it was Friday afternoon I went to Pequot City Hall

The woman who took my money there looked a bit shocked when I told her what the ticket was for and responded "I didn't know you could get a ticket on your bicycle."

Well, I did know that, but I didn't know that the Pequot Police Department were so unforgiving as to charge cyclists $60 to run their stop signs. Note the date of the incident was very close to the end of the month so there may have been quotas to make up for.

Finally, I'm NOT endorsing any hate mail or anything like that, but if anyone would like to send an email to the kind officer thanking him for keeping the streets of Northern Minnesota safe then please feel free to contact him at his email posted online on the Pequot Lakes City Hall Website:

Rich Hogan, Officer

[email protected]

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