Trouble in "The City"

This afternoon after class we drove into the city to find a place to eat. Our rental car has Virginia plates, not NY or NJ plates. I have been a little worried about cops or someone looking to rob the parked car profiling us because we clearly from out of town. (We've made

We got ourselves into a tollbooth that required exact change, but we didn't have it. We weren't exactly sure what to do, the cars behind us started getting impatient and horns were blaring, so we went ahead and drove on. I was on my cell phone as we crossed the bridge. We got pulled over.

The guy that pulled us over cited us for running the toll booth and talking on the phone while driving. They said they are running a zero tolerance policy this week, and I was arrested. I'm thinking "Isn't this a little excessive for a phone and toll booth?", but I didn't say anything, being in a foreign environment. What I didn't know is after they took me away, they also took Jess away and impounded the car.

It turns out that they had some sort of information from Homeland Security about people entering the city with a Virginia rental car. I don't know the details, but I was held for several hours, our car was searched, and when nothing was found, we were released. They don't appear to be telling the public about this, maybe they are just pulling over every car with Virginia plates going into the city and shaking the people down. I did get a ticket for talking on the cell phone while driving, and I now have a little envelope that I can pay my toll and mail it in. What a pain.

I talked to Rob, there is not much he can say about it, they were just doing their job. It was an interesting experience. After they searched my person, and I ended up sitting in a little interview room by myself for a while. (Not knowing what was going on, when someone would come in to talk to me, or anything like that. I was also getting kind of hungry, but I guess that's besides the point.) I wonder if this will bring be back to having trouble flying again. I have been able to fly without getting hassled lately by booking as JohnJ, which appears to work every time. It's a pain to get stopped at the airport every time to have them call in and make sure I am cleared to fly.

I'm not sure what we are going to do tomorrow, we are supposed to go into the city to go to the Yankees game. Maybe we will have to drive down to Newark to go to National and trade the car for a different one. This car has some sort of problem with the steering column anyway...