What the...?

This evening, I had a fight with the Redlands Volunteer Citizen Patrol (or as my thirteen year-old called him/them, "Cotton"). I argued with them for a good solid five minutes, as though something could come of it, either that they would give in, or do a darn thing to me. I mean, they can't even issue a ticket. But, perhaps I should digress.

I parked my 1992 Volvo wagon (see right, except mine is black - sweet, huh?) in front of my house, oh, let's say... three weeks ago. I mean, I was going to move it some day, really. But the white-haired men, armed with orange stickers and digital cameras, changed all that. They rolled up on my hoopdie, probably because it was connected to the ground by cobwebs - no, not probably, definitely because it was connected to the ground by cobwebs; I was in the crosshairs.

Okay, I have digressed enough.

I argued and the minutes felt like hours:
"How far would I have to move it to qualify it to be parked and not stored?"
"Well if I check the odometer and it hasn't moved...," he said.
"You check my odometer?!"
"I just look in the window"
"There has to be a better use of your time than to bother me about my car in front of my house?"
"You can't store a car on a public street."
"My next-door neighbor never moved his car from one spot for over a year!" I was getting irrational.
"I know, we gave him several warnings."

It should have hit me by then. We gave him several warnings. These guys couldn't do anything. I was the asshole. They even handed me the orange sticker instead of putting it on my car.

By this point, most of my neighbors and my three year-old son had come out to watch the show. Unabashed, I stomped into my house, got the keys and headed out to move the car. I'd show those bastards.

It took me a half-hour, double parked in my other car, to charge the battery. Mercifully, the brave men in the Chrysler minivan had moved on to another adventure. I only hope it was, as described on the web site, to be "bicycle rodeo technicians."