so Schleppie is now a "moderator"

trseaman · Post by **trseaman** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 10:55 pm

Yep...

trseaman · Post by **trseaman** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:50 pm

Sorry Schlep,

But since I've been thru Amarillo more times than I care to admit... You may actually enjoy being a moderator!

Last time thru Texas I got a speeding ticket outside Shamrock or about 2 miles from the OK state line. Officer didn't understand why I was going so fast. I told him I was in a hurry... He didn't like that too much! Had to drive back to Shamrock, meet the judge and pay my $250 fine before leaving town... Ahhh Texas!

Tim

trseaman · Post by **trseaman** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:59 pm

schlepporello wrote:doesn't even have a clue as to what "Pablum" is)

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at the 2006 Emmys Demonstrating the Use of "Pablum"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Su9kDqjbY

iiipopes · Post by **iiipopes** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 1:17 pm

We had a speed trap town near a lake tourist area called Macks Creek, Missouri. The little wide place in the road, er, town, lived off the speeding revenue, because they posted a 35 mph limit for about one mile of US Hwy 54 that was otherwise 55 or 60. The state finally shut them down.

RyanSchultz · Post by **RyanSchultz** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 2:48 pm

Congrats Schlepp.

Anymore stories about driving through the SW would be greatly appreciated; I'll be doing that drive in a month. I hear West Texas cops are really strict. . .

windshieldbug · Post by **windshieldbug** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 2:55 pm

Just don't speed through Schlepp's threads!

Rick Denney · Post by **Rick Denney** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 1:32 am

the elephant wrote:The interstate has more or less expanded to cut them off from traffic. Selma, TX is no longer a problem. But it was a major one in decades past.

What eliminated the problem was that they cited a few too many state legislators. The Texas Legislature passed a long limiting the percentage of a municipality's budget that can come from enforcement activity, in order to prevent the formation of towns just for the purpose of collecting fines from passing motorists.

And it was the National Motor Speed Limit, enacted in 1974, that really gave them the boost they needed. They were still a problem into the middle 80's, but by the time I move away from San Antonio the problem had diminished quite a bit.

Selma even built their city hall on the freeway, even though the town was a couple miles west. Last I saw, it was the City Hall Bar, and had a 40's police car on display in front of it.

One final observation: A statistical analysis of the number of young, pretty women who were paying fines at that city hall would bring interesting results.

Rick "who knew where the city limit was to the inch" Denney

Rick Denney · Post by **Rick Denney** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 1:39 am

schlepporello wrote:If I had to choose one stretch of Texas highway in my area to watch, I'd watch my speed on I-40.

The DPS Troopers in Texas often work out of the local JP court, and they have a deal worked out with the judge. But much worse are the small-town cops, and worse still are the JP-court "constables", most of whom are barely even licensed peace officers.

But I have NEVER been pulled over speeding when I wasn't actually speeding. And I've NEVER had them claim I was going faster than I really was. And they have NEVER attempted to extract the fine on the spot.

Let's say that once upon a time I was...experienced.

I once passed a trooper sitting in the median of I-40 just west of Adrian (you know the spot). I was going 70 and the limit in those days was 55. The lights went on, but then he saw my car--I'd borrowed a car from the local TxDOT district office during a visit from headquarters. He turned the lights back off. I was much more afraid that he'd complain to the District Engineer--a fine is much better than getting fired.

Rick "who has driven all of Texas's interstates and most of the major non-interstates" Denney

TubaRay · Post by **TubaRay** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 8:50 am

Rick Denney wrote: Selma even built their city hall on the freeway, even though the town was a couple miles west. Last I saw, it was the City Hall Bar, and had a 40's police car on display in front of it.
Rick "who knew where the city limit was to the inch" Denney

That place is now a Hooter's, Rick. The police car is gone. It used to just about serve as a monument to the speed trap that existed for so long. Through the years, I have never been pulled over in Selma. Of course, I don't do a lot of speeding, either. The only speeding ticket I have ever gotten in my entire life I received in nearby Converse, Tx.

Rick Denney · Post by **Rick Denney** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 10:45 am

Scooby Tuba wrote:Schlepp is a classy, level headed guy and a great choice to be a moderator!

Flattery will get you nowhere.

Rick "testing the waters by wondering if 'level' means the same thing as 'flat'" Denney

TubaRay · Post by **TubaRay** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 10:59 am

Rick Denney wrote:
Scooby Tuba wrote:Schlepp is a classy, level headed guy and a great choice to be a moderator!
Flattery will get you nowhere.
Rick "testing the waters by wondering if 'level' means the same thing as 'flat'" Denney

I always heard it was, "Flattery will get you everywhere."

windshieldbug · Post by **windshieldbug** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 11:04 am

Scooby Tuba wrote:Schlepp is a classy, level headed guy and a great choice to be a moderator!

Schlepp is a moderate!?

tubaguy9 · Post by **tubaguy9** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 9:37 pm

bloke wrote:OK...enough years have passed...I guess...

When on the way back from a "procedural" audition out on the Wasatch front in the early 1980's (...I was one of the three so-called "finalists" ), I was driving back through Nebraska in my friend's brand new Camaro. This was back during the "oil crisis" and his speedometer only went up to 80 mph (not the CAR...the speedometer).

Well...My friend was fast asleep beside me, and it was right at 8:00 A.M. on Sunday morning. I pretty much had the accelerator down to the carpet, and the needle on the speedometer was "pegged out" where it was bumping into the trip odometer reset button (true). ...(also true) absolutely NO traffic. Sure enough, Ms. Chubby Young Lady Cop begins her shift with her radar gun on heading down her westbound ramp at Anytown, NE...starting her patrol of I-80. Of course, my radar detector went off IMMEDIATELY and I trounced on the brakes so hard that the brand-new front end of that Camaro almost dragged on the pavement. With his seatbelt slapping him in the chest, my companion (the owner of the car) woke up, heard the radar detector, felt the G-force, evaluated the situation, and commented, " ' valiant effort, 'berger!" Of course, we were pulled over and I was given a ticket for going 75 mph in a (again, "energy crisis" era) 55 mph zone. Ms. Chubby Young Lady Cop admitted that she wasn't fast enough with her hands to "lock in" at any higher reading, though she knew how fast I had been going (though - again true: because of the odometer reset button and no reading available over 80 - I actually did not). She asked me, "Doesn't that hurt your car...?!?" I replied (of course), "It's not my car." She then escorted us back up to the town, witnessed me writing a check, signing the ticket, placing both in an envelope, and "sticking" it in the mailbox. My friend took over the wheel and we were about to leave, but I suggested, "Let's stop here and eat breakfast at this diner." Puzzled, he complied. After breakfast (and when Ms. Chubby Young Lady Cop was back down patroling I-80) I reached back into the mailbox and retrieved the envelope (that I had secured to the back of the mailbox door with the gum that I had been chewing to keep me awake while driving through the night).

Well...here's my confession...
I'm from NE...So, one area that I was driving had an area that went from 45 down to 25...within a mile. So, it was just my luck to be pulled over in the 25 zone doing 40. Well, this was the morning I had to take the PSAT...you know that Nat. Merit Qualifying test? I know you know...

So, that was also the same day as our big NSBA marching convention

So, when I got pulled over, they did the cop thing...So, being so young and such, I knew where everything but my insurance was...so, in the end, that might have helped me...just might...but when the cop was at her car, I was thinking about the day...got stressed out...cried

, and I got away with a warning...

Rick Denney · Post by **Rick Denney** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:16 pm

knuxie wrote:
There used to be a cafe on the interstate there in Selma called the Speed Trap with an old Selma cop car as sign of their previous history. Now it's a Hooters.

Ken F.

Selma even built their city hall on the freeway, even though the town was a couple miles west. Last I saw, it was the City Hall Bar, and had a 40's police car on display in front of it.

That place is now a Hooter's, Rick.
Somehow I feel like that AFLAC duck.....

Hey, man, I don't always read every word, okay?

But the original posting wasn't correct. It was not a Selma police car in front of the bar. It was a late-40's something-or-other, maybe a Hudson. Selma was a stage stop in the 1800's, but was just a name on the map through much of the first half of the automobile age, and didn't incorporate until 1964.

Rick "who KNOWS most people don't read everything signed by me" Denney

Rick Denney · Post by **Rick Denney** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:36 pm

tubaguy9 wrote:
OK...enough years have passed...I guess...
Well...here's my confession...

I was driving on FM2818 around the east side of Bryan, participating in a highly illegal "lime run." (A lime run is a contest of speed, where the lead car drives an unknown course, and the navigator marks the course by dropping baggies of powdered white lime within a quarter mile of each decision point. Everyone else follows the markings, which requires lots of handbrake 180's and burned rubber. The destination is a secret, but is marked by the presence of a keg. Lowest elapsed time to the keg wins. It's done late at night, of course, so the lime will reflect the headlights, and so that there will be fewer non-combatants.)

I was in the Killer Corolla (prepped for track-only racing at the time, and sporting slicks, etc.), and going at top speed--something around 140 mph. As we topped a hill, my navigator and I saw a car topping the hill on the horizon, at least a mile away. The three sets of driving lights I had on the front of the car caught a glint of reflection from the car. That is, the roof of the car.

Holy S***! I jammed on the brakes as hard as I could without decorating the surrounding landscape, and by the time we got down to 55, we were 100 feet behind a state trooper. We had no time to prepare to look innocent, or even to turn off all the auxiliary lighting. The cop slowed to 45, and we slowly passed. I don't know what the cop thought, being passed by a car with a roll cage, three pairs of driving lights, slicks, a 1" ground clearance, air dam, numbers and sponsors on the side, and a driver and passenger both wearing full-face helmets and looking innocently straight ahead. But it was a 1976 Toyota Corolla. He must have thought he was seeing an apparition, or maybe we'd blinded him with the lights, because he did not pull us over. We inched ahead of him slowly, until we got about two hills ahead of him, then we hit it and vanished.

The guys behind us got nailed. They were driving an everybody's-got-one red Camaro.

Rick "who also confesses to having soiled shorts on that occasion" Denney

Rick Denney · Post by **Rick Denney** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:40 pm

the elephant wrote:Rick, maybe that DPS boy had done a few Lime Runs in his time and felt sorry for the poor kids stuck in that Corolla!

Doubtful. The local constabulary in any college town finds the students there easy targets for abuse, much of which they deserve. I just think he wasn't paying attention to how fast we approached him, and by the time he was paying attention, we were going slowly enough. He was suspicious, but couldn't pin anything on us. It was dark--maybe he didn't notice the inside of our car or the slicks.

And Corolla, Schmorolla. We usually won. In addition to driving fast, we could also read maps.

Rick "a civil engineer trained in map-reading" Denney

CJ Krause · Post by **CJ Krause** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 12:37 pm

Can't think of a better person to be a moderator more than Schlep for many reasons.

If you ever get to meet the gentle Giant Schlep, do it. Him and his wife are are great couple and solid christians and avid tuba player who has recently started getting paid gigs.

what is amazing is it took so long to find out, he has been a moderator for a while.

tubatooter1940 · Post by **tubatooter1940** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 11:09 pm

From what I have learned about Schlepporello, having read him for some years. If he decides to take this on, he will do it completely and well.
Anyone foolish enough to try him on will find his size and determination more than enough for a big ole attitude adjustment.

TubeNet

so Schleppie is now a "moderator"

Schlepp

Re: Schlepp