What the Goonies Did
1.  Make car hire reservation on the day you require the car. $660
2.  Drive fast to save on travelling time. Free
3.  Get a speeding fine for doing 96mph on a 65mph speed limit road. $396
4.  Get photographs holding ridiculously expensive speeding ticket at Santa Maria Police Station. Priceless

The way the Goonies did the Pacific Coast Highway was foolish and expensive. We have estimated that we would have saved around $300-400 if we had stopped chasing our desire for a convertible and instead made a car hire reservation well in-advance. Also the fact we got caught speeding did not help meaning we spent approximately $800 extra than we had originally estimated to complete the Pacific Coast Highway road trip.

The Crime

Getting caught speeding in America is extremely stupid considering how strict they are about speeding. When being the lone driver and driving on sections that were straighter than Chuck Norris with no Pacific Coast in sight, boredom easily set in. The more bored I got the quicker we wanted to complete the section. Before the incident there were no other cars on the interstate, so I applied a little more juice to push through the section faster. Then out of no where there was the flashing lights of a police car behind us. It was too late we had already been clocked as I slammed on the brakes massively late. Being totally confused with silly images of the possible consequences, I ground to a halt in the middle of the interstate. After regaining focus we pulled over to the hard shoulder where the officer told us to stay in the car until further instructions. To my amazement the officer did not ask how fast I was going which I was expecting. But instead just came out saying I was way over the limit going 96mph in a 65mph. The officer then proceeded by saying there is no chance he could let us off as he had caught another Englishman speeding the previous day.

Expecting to pay a fine on the spot we were further shocked when the officer said he had to escort us back to the sheriff’s department to post bail. On the journey back to the sheriff’s department we had Spandau Ballet’s - Gold playing which will now always remind us of this incident.

At the sheriff’s department everything was relatively simple, we had to post my bail immediately and got our photograph’s around the station with no questions.  On a different agenda we all still had some of our ‘manwich’ left from the day before which would have gone down a treat if we heated it up, maybe they had a microwave in their office. Sadly, no one had the nerve to ask.

Starring:

The Arresting Officer: Officer MiClare

The Offender: Mike

The Accomplishes: From the left John, Chris, Jingkei (aka Sleep Too Much Clan)

And finally Kev and Shelia Number 2.