Two tickets

Two tickets to what you ask. 

To paradise?  Nope 

To the Olympics?   Nope (well I do actually but that’s a different subject)

To a great musical?  Nope

Two traffic tickets - yes!!!!!

Yes, you read correctly, I have lived in England for less than 2 months and I now have two traffic tickets.  Since I have been here for 2 months, I wish I could say that I received one per month even though those would still be really bad odds.  No, I received two tickets in the span of two weeks.  Seems to be that 2 is not my lucky number.  I am sure you are wondering what on earth I did to receive two tickets. 

Well both tickets were mailed to me so I couldn’t plead my case of being the dumb American to a cop L  Instead the wonderful country of England has wonderful traffic cameras that they place all over motorways, city roads and roads through the small towns.  Stupid traffic cameras.  I will say they do warn you though; they put up traffic sign of a camera giving you a warning of the cameras.  That’s better than the red light cameras where you get no warning. 

The first one I got was for driving in a bus lane while leaving Oxford.  I didn’t even know I was driving in a freaking bus lane; I was just following what the GPS lady told me.  The ticket was for £30 if I paid it in the next 14 days, £60 if paid after that.  But the best part about this ticket, not only did I get a pretty picture of myself driving the car but I also got a letter from Avis, who we rented the car from, saying they were charging me a £30 administrative fee for telling the city of Oxford it was me driving the car.  Really Avis, £30 administrative fee?!?!  Needless to say, that was not a pleasant evening for me.  I will say that I have a great coworker and friend.  David, who was driving with me at the time, shared the ticket cost with me even after I told him he didn’t have to.  That’s a good friend. 

Now for the second ticket, I sort of thought this one was coming.  After dropping Aaron off at the airport the other weekend, I was making my way back into the city limits of Chester when I looked up to see the speed limit sign of 30mph.  (Side note: the speed limits are in mph, the car speedometers are in mph and the street sign distances are in miles but yet everything else is the metric system, so odd!!).  As soon as I saw the 30mph sign, I looked down at my speedometer to see how fast I was going, saw I was over and started to slow down.  As soon as I looked back up, I saw the wonderful light in my rearview mirror, the flashing light of a speed camera.  I do think I jinxed myself on this one though because the night before I had told Aaron that I was a little afraid that we were going to get a ticket from the cameras from driving through Wales.  There were one or two areas where he was going above the speed limit in small towns or around construction areas.  No ticket for Aaron though!  When the ticket arrived earlier this week, it said I was going 37mph in a 30mph zone.  I was amazed when I heard this.  I could not believe I had just gotten a ticket for 7mph over!!!  Apparently, if I was doing 5mph over, I would have been fine.  So my boss and I read the fine print and it looks like this ticket will be £60 and 3 points on my license.  Since I don’t have a UK license for them to apply the points to, the letter said something about going to court.  We aren’t sure if I personally have to go to court or just the ticket will be taken and I will have to write a letter saying im guilty.  Let’s hope it’s the latter cause I really don’t want to go to court for 7mph over. 

Now I am paranoid about getting another speeding ticket and am constantly looking for speed limit signs.  Let’s just hope these will be my last two tickets during this trip! 

One more thing, for those of you that live in Houston, I will be home next Friday night. My boss is letting me stay for 2 weeks instead of one!  The weekend of Cinco de Mayo I will be in Nashville for Karens bachlorette party but I still expect lots of happy hours while im home :)