That's Trouble with a capital T that rhymes with P & that stands for Police!

Jill and I decided to again take advantage of our free flight benefits by flying down to Cancun on Friday. We'd been there before a few years ago and really enjoyed it.

I'm still not sure why I decided to rent a car for our short weekend trip. Every time we've been to Mexico with a car rental reservation it has never worked out. So, of course, after we got through customs and went to the Avis booth, they didn't have my reservation, and when they finally found it in their system, they didn't have the car I had reserved. All they had left was a Jeep. After arguing back and forth for a few minutes that I shouldn't have to pay more than my original reservation, I agreed to pay $20 extra for the Jeep. After all, they were about 3 or 4 times as expensive online. When we finally finished the paperwork, we went out to get in the car, except, the Jeep was missing a window! "Of course it was," the manager replied, "why else would it be so cheap!" After again arguing back and forth for a few minutes, and Carlos assuring me that we'd be fine without a window, we took off for our nice weekend beach vacation in Cancun.

However, only a few minutes later, after the speed limit had changed quickly from 70km/h to 40km/h and back and forth several times, I noticed police lights in my rear view mirror. The night was off to a great start. The young police officer quickly informed me that I was getting a very expensive ticket and that he would have to take my license until I went to the station and paid to get it back. I tried to talk him out of it as we'd only been there about an hour and were leaving on Sunday, but he told me he couldn't because I was on video and he had to give me a ticket. He then asked me to get out of the car and come back to his car. I quickly felt a case of extortion coming on and imagined myself being stuck in a Mexican prison before the night was over. He started to write out a "ticket" on a sheet of paper that just had blank lines and was definitely not made for giving official tickets. After again trying to talk him into just letting me off the hook, he told he could either take the license and I'd have to go to the station, or I could just pay him $150 cash now. I told him I only had $20 cash on me and he said since I was such a nice guy, he'd lower the price to $80. Again, I told him I didn't have that much and I promise to obey the speed limit if he just let me off. Again, he said he couldn't. So, since I figured he was lying to me, I'd have to start lying back to him. Wanting to scare him but not upset him, I told him my father-in-law (sorry Mark if the Mexican P.D. comes looking for you) was a police officer in the states and he told me to always get a police officer's badge number when I got pulled over. He, of course, didn't have a badge number but told me his name was Jorje, and that should be good enough. I said, "ok, I'll just write down your license plate number and that should do." He thought for a second, and again said he was going to take my license if I couldn't pay him. I was starting to get a little upset at this point, so I said "You can't take my license. So, I'm going to call the US Embassy because they give us a number to call in our passports if we have trouble." He thought for another second, then laughed and tore up my fake ticket. "For you my friend, it's free." He then wrote me a ticket on their official forms but it was a ticket just for tourists and it was free. So, that was a fun experience.

The rest of the vacation was pretty uneventful. We got to hang out at the beach and pool for a little bit Saturday morning, but the rest of the time it rained. (Yes we did drive to the airport in the rain with only ONE window, and yes the car was wet inside)

(compare before & after, sad huh )

It was still nice to get away and relax though. At least we got to fly first-class there and back and to see the beautiful Mexican ocean for a while. We might go back to Cancun again this summer, but we definitely won't be renting a car.

PS: Jill chose the title and Mark says nobody will know where I got that idea from... 10 bonus points if you can tell me what movie that is from!