I was just thinking about how I hadn't been stopped by the police in a while -- not once, I realized, since I quit working at the commissary in March. In other words, I have not been pulled over because I no longer drive across town three or four times a week. In fact, I hardly leave Hippodrome: I live in Hippodrome, work in Hippodrome, do most of my food shopping in Hippodrome. If my little car could take all the potholes, I could do all this on only dirt roads without going through any major intersections.

Well, sure enough, I got stopped last Sunday, on the way to my friend's house across the river. I had just dealt with a flat tire (read: told E, who came out and fixed it) and I was not in the mood. (Is one ever in the mood to get pulled over, hassled, and shaken down for a bribe?) In the end he told me that because I was "so pretty" he would let me off for "the price of tea." I tried to give him just a few hundred francs but he rejected it. I wound up giving him 1000.

I lost count -- I think I got stopped once or twice since my last blog entry on this topic and didn't note it -- that would bring the grand total to nine or ten stops in 19 months of driving.