Okay, the gift itself wasn’t that much, unless you add in the $190 traffic ticket… about which I’m exceptionally annoyed. We dropped by the MTS Center in Winnipeg today to pick up tickets to “Disney on Ice” for the kids for Christmas. Arrrgh. In this day and age, can anyone explain why they can sell tickets for all kinds of events online — even airline flights — over the phone, or at any one of a hundred remote outlets around the city (or country!), but if you want tickets for Disney on Ice, noooo, you have to come right downtown to the box office at the event venue and get them there. Noplace else will do, they won’t sell them that way. I’m miffed at them first. So we make a special trip downtown and my wife runs in while I circle the block twice. By “circle the block” of course I mean a 6-block radius given the negotiation of one-way streets in the area. At the second revolution when my wife gets back in the car, I follow the vehicle in front of me, turning right from Portage Avenue onto Donald Street to head back toward home.

That’s the point where a policeman hops out of his parked vehicle and flags us both over to the curb. Now, these two streets intersect at a 90-degree angle and Donald is a one-way. No issues with the maneuver so far. There are a number of signs in the area proclaiming “No Right on Red” during certain hours, but this one in particular doesn’t have the “on red” or the hours attached… so you can’t make a right turn there, ever. Seems pretty random to me: why on earth not? The two of us wait while the cop’s partner writes up our tickets and the original cop flags down another right-turn criminal. I’ve gotten a number of traffic tickets in my misspent youth (speeding, of course), but this is downright objectionable.

$190, if you please. Bah! Humbug!