twenty shy of fifty

The plan this morning was simple. Head over to D.D. for a coffee, then head to McDonald's for two breakfast burritos, then head up to Inverness.

After getting my coffee, the Micky D's I went to in Tampa was closed. At 5:30am. They're supposed to open at 5am.

I headed over to another one a few miles away. No problem. They were open. Got my burritos.

The plan was then to get on to I-275 North. That didn't happen. I ended up on 589 instead. A toll highway.

Ugh.

Long story short: I hopped off an exit where there was a fifty cent toll. Two lanes, neither of which had attendants. They were the "throw your change in the bucket" kind of automated thing-a-ma-doo's only.

I looked in my cupholder and I only had thirty cents in nickels.

S--t.

Then I read the sign that says you'll be fined $100.00 if you run the toll gate, as all metro area toll gates are equipped with cameras that will snap a photo of your license plate if you run it without paying, then later you get a nice little note in the mail with a fine.

Fuggit.

I stopped at the gate, threw in the thirty cents I had and ran the gate. There wasn't any up/down bar thing to wait for so I ran right thru.

There are three possible outcomes from this:

a. The change processor hopefully "thought" about all those nickels long enough for me to get out of the camera's view, thereby escaping scot free.

b. The camera did get a shot of my plate, but hopefully will note that an attempt to pay is on record - and possibly may waive the fine.

c. I'll get a $100 fine in the mail in about a month.

I'm betting it's either A or C. Which one do you think it will be?

Today's lesson learned is this: Always have a roll of quarters at the ready in your glove box, else you run the risk of running a toll gate like I did this morning.

I'll be changing a ten dollar bill sometime today to do just that. 🙂