Bringing the Pain

My forearms and fingernails ache from the massive amount of weed pulling this weekend. We are cleaning out the back lot that's full of ivy, holly, tree starts, berry brambles (who knew I would ever get rid of berries!) and an invasive vine that smells like peanut butter. Two days x ~6 hrs/day = Two pickup trucks full that we took to McFarlane's to be recycled. Turns out each load was $6 ($40 per ton, $6 minimum) and we had a total of 450 lbs. That was just in weeds. We still have another 2 loads in trimmed branches. Exhausting. I went with Ken on his second load. He didn't tie it down since nothing was moving (berry brambles are like velcro) and we stayed in the right lane with our hazards on so people could see us, but that didn't stop the police officer from pulling us over. The problems?

1. Load not secured
2. Illegal use of hazard lights on highway
3. Illegal license plate frame that covered registration stickers
4. Not having our valid insurance card with us (although we have insurance, we forgot to put the up-to-date proof in the car. oops).

The license plate violation was $240 on its own, so our $12 in yard debris took an unexpected increase in cost. But for whatever reason, the officer let us off with a warning for all of it. Maybe he saw the exhaustion in our faces and dirt on our arms or perhaps it was the lack of any priors. Either way, we were quite relieved to be excused and learned an important lesson about taking yard debris in a pickup truck.