What the CHP Is Helping Me Give Up for Lent: Speeding

Happy Mardi Gras everyone!  If you're not in New Orleans (like me), you're missing out on the best reason ever concocted to throw a party on a Tuesday.  According to the folks on KGO today, my hometown hotels are 95% booked and people are having fun and spending cash there like you wouldn't believe.  Geaux Nawlins!

Those of you looking for a gigantic bacchanalia here in Silicon Valley are in luck: the second annual HR Week West is being held at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara on Great America Parkway.

But outside the carnival atmosphere there, the California Highway Patrol has redoubled their efforts to crackdown on speeding in the Bay Area.

Instead of taking a breadth-first approach and spreading thin coverage along many routes, they've decided to send squads of five, four motorbikes and one cruiser, to attack particular stretches as part of their everyday routine.  I've actually seen these squads at work on 101 and 280 and they are not subtle.

Though I'm not particularly religious, giving up something for Lent each year has been an important tradition to me for quite a while --- and driving fast on the highway is admittedly one of my favorite vices, one that's going to be very hard to give up.  So much so that I wish my kryptonite were beer, Doritos or chocolate.  They don't say they'll give you a ticket for eating too many Snickers bars.