Spring is in the air ... out come the crazies!

"Such a wonderful day" remarked my neighbor.  It has, indeed, been a string of gorgeous sunny, spring days.  "I bet it makes your commute also easier without the rains" he added.

I merely smiled as we went our different directions.

The reality is that the commute and life seem to have been easier during the rainy days.  The sunny days bring the crazies out.

Yesterday morning, I was thinking about my class as I tailed two other vehicles on the country road with plenty of sharp curves when out of nowhere a Lexus appeared in my rear-view mirror.  He was in a hurry alright.

Suddenly he shot out to pass me and I slowed down to allow him to jump ahead of me.  He kept going, however.  He did not care that a curve was coming up.  He did not apparently care for the double-yellow stripe on the road that makes passing illegal.  He kept going in the opposing traffic lane, past me, past the car that was ahead of me, and past the first car also as he rounded the curve.  Crazy #1 he was!

A few miles later, with the other vehicles having exited the country road, I had the road all to myself and was enjoying the drive until I had to slow down from 60 mph to between 35 and 40 mph because the driver of that Honda Civic was not apparently keen on anything more than 40, though 55 was the posted speed limit. Crazy #2!  Unlike the Lexus driver, I waited for conditions to be safe for me to overtake the Honda, which, by then, had slowed down to as much as 30 mph.

At least no other crazies after those two.

At the end of the day, as I walked back to my car to begin the return home, I was shocked to find that the campus police had ticketed me for parking without a permit.  The officer had in his/her infinite wisdom completely overlooked the decal on the rear fender.

Pissed, I drove up the campus safety office, and waited my turn at the counter.

"Your officer made a mistake in writing this ticket.  I have a permit on the car" I said.

"We cannot take care of it here" she said.  "We only administer the parking.  Only the people at the administration office can void it for you."

I am now even more pissed.  "But you are the parking people, right?"

"Yes.  But we cannot take care of your ticket."

"So, for a mistake that you people made, you want me to run around?" I asked her as politely as I could.

"If you want, we have a complaint form there" she said with a tone that seemed to be mildly sarcastic.

This is how bureaucracy works.  When they mess up, they don't have to correct it.  The burden is upon us.

So, I drove to the administration office and waited for my turn at the counter.

I stepped up.  "Your officer made a mistake" I said, again.

She said it was her colleague's job and returned to her chair.  The colleague came up to the counter.  I handed her the parking ticket.

"Do you have a permit?" she asked me.

"Yes."

"Where is it on the car?"

"On the left side of the rear bumper."

Meanwhile, she looked up the database.

"This time I will void it because the system shows that you did purchase a parking permit" she said.

I got really, really, pissed off.  She could have said something like "I am sorry for the trouble."  But she did not.  Instead, she made it seem like she was doing me a favor with "this time I will void it."  So, the next time?  WTF!

But, over the years I have come to realize that there is no point fighting with bureaucrats.  I simply walked away.

It was thus that I merely smiled at my neighbor's remark--I am sure he wouldn't have had the patience to listen to all these as a response to the small talk that we engage in.

Life does change in many ways with the changing seasons.