a lot of people had to die for me to be me

today was not a good day.

i couldn't fall asleep so i was up until 3 or 4, and then had to wake up at 7 to get to the vw dealer 45 minutes away by 9:30. my r32 has had its check engine light on for months due to a bad o2 sensor but since it was post-cat (and most of that time i didn't even have a cat on the car) i didn't really care. since i just hit 40,000 miles, i figured i'd have it fixed and get an oil change. i called the dealer last week and setup the appointment, notifying the service writer that the check engine light was for a bad o2 sensor.

while on my way there, i was driving eastbound on 68 approaching quentin road, at which there was a red light. there are two lanes of traffic in my direction and there were 4 or 5 cars stopped in the left lane and none in the right lane, which i was in. as i got about 150 feet from the light, it changed green, and since the two lanes merge right after the light, i sped up (since i was slowing down for the red light) to beat the left-lane traffic to the merge.

after i merged left, the traffic behind me merged and i continued on my way. about 3/4 mile down the road, i notice the dark blue chevy suburban behind me is catching up to me pretty fast, and then lights start to flash from behind its front grille.

i pull over and the cop comes up to my car and asks for my license. as i'm giving it to him, he asks if i know how fast i was going and what the speed limit was, to which i reply "i don't know". he says he was "doing 60 and [he] couldn't catch up to [me], so [i] must have been going much faster than that", since, you know, the distance between our cars and our rates of acceleration from the stop light had nothing to do with anything.

he points to the v1 remote on my dash and asks what it's for. i say it's for my radar detector and he then proceeds to go on a tirade, yelling at me for having a radar detector because "[people with radar detectors] don't drive the speed limits" and just speed everywhere until the radar detectors tell us to slow down. all the while i'm just looking at him from behind my sunglasses like, "what the hell is your deal, just write me a ticket already". then he says, "you think we give people with radar detectors breaks?!" as if i asked him to let me off with a warning.

he comes back with a ticket and then tells me a story about how he's writing more tickets these days for people with radar detectors because they use lidar now and he can pace people without using radar. once he left i looked at the ticket, on which he wrote, "exceeding posted speed limit: paced not less than 58 mph in a 45 mph zone". so all you speeders with radar detectors (because people without them never speed), watch out for those unmarked suburbans with no visible police lights that will pace you while you speed.

once i actually got to the dealership, i handed over my pride and joy and reiterated what i needed done to the car. the on-site enterprise rent-a-car schmuck gave me a sweet chrysler minivan in return (last time i was there, they gave me a pt cruiser). the guy told me to cheer up because "it was just a speeding ticket", but i was only irritated because i would have to drive a fucking minivan around for the day. i got in and went to put the bottle of orange juice i had just bought in the cup holder, but the cup holders in the minivan are made for fucking 2 litres or something and it just fell out. (yeah, yeah, eventually i figured out how to adjust it for smaller, un-american drink containers.)

in a now-doubly sour mood, i just wanted to listen to some music and get home. my ipod was in my r32 of course, so i was stuck with the radio. i really hate the radio. i haven't listened to the radio in my r32 in i don't know how long (and since i have a stubby antenna, i don't get any reception anyway) and i don't even know what the stations are these days. i hit the scan button to find something, but one after another, it's just crap, commercial, commercial, crap, jesus crap, talking, commercial. i finally locate a song and after 20 seconds it ends and some idiot starts talking for 2 minutes. i hit scan again and just went numb as it looped over every station over and over for 30 minutes while i navigated the minivan through traffic.

at the end of the day i drive back to the dealer to pick up my r32 and the service writer says "you'll need to come back, we didn't have the o2 sensor in stock". i furrow my brow in attempt to comprehend. "uh, that's the whole reason i brought the car here, why didn't you have it in stock?" he didn't know. "so what did you do with the car all day?" they changed the oil.

i pay my bill and return to the comfort of my r32, only to be greeted with the check engine light that i was hoping would finally be gone.