Thursday, April 23, 2009

Detroit Again

his weeks trip was returning to Detroit again! In some ways I find going to Detroit to be depressing. It makes me consider the once proud US Auto Industry that is now in such decline, and all of the unemployment that goes with it. This was where my proud old lady, my 1967 Mustang was conceived and given birth. Now it’s full of closed and empty buildings and unemployed people, with all of the shattered dreams that go with that.
As usual these days, I flew pretty. Not sure if it was my attitude or what, but it just seemed like a very comfortable day with several friendly people. I took a couple of pics at the airport, one or two with my bags, because the thought of showing you the bags I travel with amused me. Detroit 2009 04 21 005

Detroit 2009 04 21 006
You know, it takes a fairly large bag to carry enough clothes, makeup, and sparklies for two people for a week! Even at that, it occurred to me that this pic doesn’t tell the entire story because I didn’t have my laptop backpack on. So this is what I drag through countless airports and on and off of shuttle buses.
Detroit 2009 04 21 003
I LOVE this skirt for a couple of reasons: First, it’s cute as hell, and second, it just feels sexy. It’s a bit tighter than most I wear and so it sort of hugs you as you walk. Yeah, I know, TMI huh?
If you want women to talk to you and compliment you, you need to get a pair of shoes like the pair I was wearing. I swear I’m not exaggerating, every single time I wear these shoes I have women stop me to comment on them.
As I checked in with US Airways, two of the ladies behind the counter both went out of their way to tell me how cute they thought my shoes were!
“Those are cute!” one of them said to me. The other one peeked around the counter at them and then nodded in agreement.
“And they look comfortable too!” the other lady added.
“Well thank you!” I said “They are one of my very favorite pair and they ARE comfortable – I can wear them all day and be perfectly comfy!” I replied with a smile.
Got to my seat near the back of the plane and sort of people watched as folks boarded. I watch one very gruff looking guy, big beard and mustache, looking like he is one of those frontier men from the 1800’s. He’s looking at his ticket and at the seat next to me, and he doesn’t look happy. The seat next to me was in fact his seat, and there we sat for the next hour or so, with me thinking he was uncomfortable being next to me. Funny thing though, after a small nap the guy woke up and turned into a friendly little chatty Cathy! I had read him completely wrong! Here I was assuming this “he-man” was irritated to sit next to me, and it turns out he was really quite nice and was just tired. That entire hour I had sat there feeling kind of angsty and uncomfortable, fearing he might be intensely uncomfortable to sit near me, and it was for nothing – it was all in my head.
Not sure what it is, but I think there’s a lesson there somewhere for me.
Many hours later, I arrive in Detroit at about 730 PM. Everyone on the air craft is standing in the aisle, grabbing their bags, and waiting to get off of the plane when the flight attendant comes over the PA.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to take your seats and please be sure you keep your bags out of the aisle.” What the hell? Everyone sort of looks at each other, surprise evident in all of their eyes, and they start to get back into their seats, many still holding their bags in their laps. A few moments later a policeman comes striding down the aisle. I looked at the guy that had been sitting next at me and laughed as the policeman approached us.
“Ah hell, what did you do?!” I teased him.
“Uh uh, wasn’t me!” he replied with a grin of his own.
The policeman walked to the back of the plane and then returned shortly, leading a young, sort of rough looking girl out in hand cuffs. There’s another first for me. I’ve never seen that done before.
I got off of the plane, grab my bags, and head for the rental car shuttle bus. I did my best to sort of toss my bag and tool box up onto the bus, but it’s hard to fling 40 and 50 pound bags with one hand, so I only got them to the top step. As I was climbing aboard to grab them, two men both jumped up and helped place them in the racks. I gave them my best smile and the softest “Thank you so much” I could manage, hoping they wouldn’t realize I was a male. While not often, this has happened to me before and it leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s a welcome confirmation that I was perceived as female, but on the other hand, I feel I have abused their generosity and chivalry.
The bus was packed, so I headed to the rear and the only remaining seat, next to a young lady, probably in her late 20’s. Part way through the trip to the rental car lot, the magic shoes strike again.
“Excuse me,” she said “Those shoes are awesome. Where did you get them?”
What did I tell you? The shoes are like compliment magnets!
Got to the Avis lot to find that they had screwed up everyone’s reservation and so everyone from the bus was standing in a line that exited the building and wrapped around the side. I chatted with three or four people around me and not one batted an eye or looked at all uncomfortable.
When you leave the rental car lot, you have to present your contract and drivers license to the gate guard. When I handed it to him he clearly didn’t think it was mine. He looked very uncomfortable and was handing my license back to me while he started hesitantly to speak.
“Ma’am, I need your . . . OH!” he said with a little laugh, as it clicked and he figured out the guy on the drivers license was me. By the time I got to the hotel, it was almost 9PM and I was tired, so I called it a night.
The next day I did my job, and fixed a broken machine. This one had an intermittent fault, which is exceedingly difficult and time consuming to pin down. I’d much rather be faced with an instrument that has flat out failed than one that just operates poorly. Anyway, got it repaired at last and got back to the hotel by around 5. I grabbed m skirt and top out of the closet and then stood there holding them in my hands. ‘How odd’ I thought to myself. ‘I have absolutely no desire to go any where.’ The thought of spending all the time and effort to get ready just to spend a couple of hours out and about just didn’t seem worth it to me. I went and got a nice and fattening mushroom, swiss, and steak burger from Burger Kind, and spent the rest of the night cruising the internet and annoying people online.
Flying back home the next morning, I had some time in the Detroit airport and so I window shopped in a few of the stores they have. I was in one that sold some pricey purses and the sales lady walked up, an African American, about my age, maybe a little younger.
“Can I help you find something sir?” she asked with a pleasant voice.
“Nah, I just had some time to kill and thought I’d look around!” I told her.
“Well, of your looking to buy a bag for someone, we have a very good deal going on! Most are half off and I don’t know any woman that wouldn’t like a Calvin Klein bag!” she said with a smile. I was looking at them but didn’t really see anything I liked much, let alone several hundred dollars worth of “like”.
“You know” I said “To be honest, I just don’t see anything I like that much.”
“Well, maybe she would like one?” She replied “After all, you wont be wearing it and women do love them.” She persisted gently. I didn’t say anything for a second. I’ve never done this before, but for some reason I just had to.
“It’s not as much a given as you might think that I wont be wearing it.” I said to her. She laughed a little, not at all shocked. I think she had suspected as much already.
“Honey, that’s OK with me! I’m all for diversity.” At that point I pulled out my phone and showed her the one “Kim” pic that I carry on it and you should have seen her jaw drop.
Fav Smile
“That’s you??!!” she almost squealed. She kept looking at the ugly old man standing in front of her, then at the pic, at me, the pic . . .
“Oh my God, your beautiful!” she said with this stunned look on her face. I don’t know what I’d expected when I showed her my picture, but there is no question that her surprise and enthusiasm are genuine. I sort of held out my hand to get my phone back from her, but she kept a hold of it, and kept comparing the picture to me, until I started to blush.
“Not too bad for an old man huh?” I asked her.
“You look so cute! I just can’t believe that’s you!” she replied, still with kind of an awed voice.
“I come through this airport quite a bit like that.” I shared with her, adding a wink for emphasis.
“Honey, you have got to stop by here the next time you do. Would you please??!!”
“I dunno, I can’t afford to shop here. I’m afraid I’m sort poor by these standards” I replied. She laughed again.
“Sweet heart, I can’t afford to shop here either!” she said in a mock whisper, acting like two conspirators. “You know this stuff in the airports is always twice as expensive!”
Clearly we had gone beyond customer and sales associate, and were now “girl” friends.
This was a good week, almost entirely pleasant. I’d spoken to many people, and all of them had acted like I was a normal human being. I do not have a feminine voice, so there is no question that even if my appearance might have fooled them, once I started speaking to them, they all knew I was Transgender and it hadn’t mattered to them.
As soon as I landed in Chicago to catch my connection, I got an email from my manager giving me the information for another customer in Detroit that wants a preventative maintenance service call, so looks like I’ll be back here shortly. Next week I’m off to Northern California. On the one hand I’m very pleased to be so busy for my job. On the other hand, I’m not spending much time with my seven months pregnant wife and with my children. It also bothers me to think that I’m this busy because they have laid off half of my company. . .

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Roanoke Virginia

Roanoke 2009 04 008
Well, the last day on my week long trip here was not a real good one personally or professionally. While it worked flawlessly the entire day before during the setup and training, today our Residual gas analyzer decided to fail. Turns out the main processor board has failed and that can't be replaced in the field due to programming and setup requirements. So dead in the water and nothing to be done about it here, so I headed south to Roanoke where my flight leaves in the morning. The other engineer from my company that surprised me by being here has gone home, so I was pretty much on my own.
In boy mode for the drive, I raided a couple of Goodwills and got nothing but curious looks from other shoppers for my trouble. No hidden treasures found. :-(

Got to my new hotel, cleaned up, and went shopping at Macy's and then saw the movie "Knowing". The movie was all right, but left me trying to decide if I'd just seen a Sci Fi or religious fantasy. A bit confused but still a worth while movie!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Detroit and Almost Busted in Blacksburg VA

So this week I will be spending entirely on the road, to include traveling on Saturday as a result of my customer insisting that Friday is the only day he has open for training. Six months ago this would have resulted in a short conversation where I’d have told him as politely as possible “Blow it out your ass, it either happens Tuesday to Thursday or it doesn’t happen.” With the economy the way it is, my company needing all the income we can get, and knowing that 50% of my company is now unemployed, I instead told him “Yes sir, I’ll be there!”

I’ve got a few new outfits this trip, odds and ends I’ve been finding at Goodwill. Nothing real special or terribly different from my norm, but hey . . .

As usual, I had a very early start to my travel day, getting up at 3AM so I would have time to get ready and out of the house before my daughter wakes up. This night I didn’t get much sleep though. My 20 year old son (who does know about me) poked his head into the room about midnight to warn me that a girl friend of his (who does NOT know about me) was going to be coming over at around 2AM. She’s a good girl, but has screwed up parents who threw her out of the house when she refused to be in by 10PM. She literally has no place to go so my wife and I have told my son that she is welcome to call our home her own. We could use the good karma and it may not be that long before WE are looking for a place to stay. Well, I found it hard to sleep worrying about what time she would arrive, would I still be able to fly pretty, was I running too big a risk getting ready with her in the house, etc. Finally she arrived at exactly 3AM (when my own alarm went off), but fortunately she must have been exhausted and headed directly to bed, so I had the downstairs to myself to get ready. J


Detroit 200904 001
Detroit 200904 003


This was my first chance to use my new ID with my “pretty” picture on it and I pulled that puppy out every chance I got! I imagine most people had no idea why I was grinning like an idiot every time I was asked for ID!

I’ve been flying femme for about a year now and this was the very first time that a male sitting next to me chose to strike up a conversation! He went out of his way to speak with me, asked about my job, my company, where I lived, etc. Not a huge thing, but a pleasant thing none the less.

I flew on US Airways and connected in Charlotte NC. I managed to snap a pic or two from the air on the way in.

Charlotte, North Carolina from the Air 200904 008

As I was boarding my connecting flight, the flight attendant at the rear of the airplane where I was sitting gave me a huge smile.
“How are you this morning?” she asked.
“I just couldn’t be gooder, thank you!” I replied, giving her my best smile. “And how are you”?
“Oh, I couldn’t be any gooder either!” she laughed while swiping my favorite phrase. As I was getting settled in to my seat she walked up and started speaking to me. It was at about this point that I noticed she was really quite pretty and had terrific eyes! Sorry, but despite the fact that they wouldn’t claim me, I am a guy and do notice these things!
“I’m fine but had a lot of trouble sleeping last night.” She tells me in a confidential tone.
Considering I’d only had about 4 hours of sleep myself, I sort of laughed and told her I know exactly how that feels!
Kind of tired when I got in to Detroit so all I did was get some exercise and channel surf.

The next day I fixed the customers instrument very quickly. Including a great deal of time spent on the phone with another customer, and time waiting for everything to stabilize, I was done in about 2 hours. Since I had set this trip up to go directly from Detroit to my next customer in Roanoke VA the following day, this gave me an entire afternoon to fart around. Once upon a time this would have made me deliriously happy, but I now I just felt guilty that I had not set up my flights to leave today instead and saved my company tonight’s hotel expense. Well, I had no way to know things would go so well, so may as well enjoy it. Got to the hotel and cleaned up, and headed shopping!
Detroit 200904 010

I hit up Macy’s because they were supposed to have a huge shoe sale, but I honestly didn’t care for much that I saw there. Certainly nothing I was going to spend my money on anyway.
I’m walking through JC Penny when an older woman starts to talk to me as I walked by. She’s holding a small blue jean coat up to show me.
“This is normally $65 and it’s on sale for $7! Can you believe that??!!” I took a look at it.
“Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.” I replied with a smile, trying to speak softly so I don’t blow it. She looks me straight in the eyes, which is a little unnerving as despite her age, she has very clear, bright, and piercing eyes.
“Honey, you look terrific. You look just great.” She paused long enough for me to get in a blush and a “thank you!”
“So,” she says, again holding the little coat up, “What do you think about it? How would it look?” she asks.
“Umm, to be honest, I don’t think its ‘me’” I said. She sort of rolled her eyes,
“On ME dear! How would it look on ME?” Once again I blushed, because her intent should have been fairly obvious. Instead I was all about “me me me” – kind of egocentric huh? (My wife will laugh herself sick if she reads this. I can just hear her “Well duh!!”)
“I think it might look pretty cute on you, and we both know you will be mad if you don’t get it.” I told her.
“You know what? Your right – I WOULD be angry later! I think I’ll get it. Besides, I’m 80 years old and I’ll wear what ever I want to wear!” she said, still with those bright blue eyes just beaming away. Being as how I am a male dressed as female, the irony of her statement was not at all lost on me. She was so cute, it was all I could do to keep from hugging her
“There ya go!” I said “Besides, growing up is over rated!” We traded a few more comments and then went our own ways. I was just struck that she had clearly gone out of her way to be sociable with me. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that maybe she has known or even loved a Transgender before. She was just so comfortable speaking with me. The more I think about, the more I wish I had hugged her.

Didn’t find anything I liked well enough to buy, so I headed to the Motor City Casino. They have a big sign saying “We ID anyone 30 and younger”. Yeah, they didn’t even hesitate when I approached! L It’s been a LONG time since anyone thought I was 30 or younger.
So I started with $20 and played video poker. On my third hand I got 4 of a kind, and in two more hands I got 4 of a kind again! I cashed out and had something like $49. I figured what the hell, and went to a dollar slot machine and thought I’d spend the $9 and walk out with $40 even. On my first spin I bet $1, but by accident, instead of hitting the “Spin Reels” button, I hit the bet max . . . and hit two bars with a “Double” symbol! Now I had turned my $20 into $80 and even though I’d been there only 15 minutes I called it a night! No way in hell I was gonna give them the chance to take their money back from me!

Detroit 200904 013

The following morning I was flying from Detroit to Roanoke VA through Philadelphia. Another 3AM morning, but hey I’m getting used to them. As usual, I arrived at the airport about two hours early and had time to take a look around the airport. I was walking by this little gizmo shop where two women were speaking to each other, and I thought I heard one of them say something about “Isn’t that cute?!” but I wasn’t sure. I continued on to the book store where I found that every book on the Science Fiction shelf was in fact fantasy and not Sci Fi. Call me a Sci Fi snob if you like, but this always irritates the hell out of me. Fantasy is NOT science fiction and it bugs the hell out of me when book stores don’t know the difference. I gave up on finding a book I’d like and so headed back to the gate. I again passed the two chatting women in the gadget shop, but this time one of the women spoke up as I walked by.
“We love your outfit!” she gushed. The other woman agreed and added “That skirt is SO cute!” I thanked them both and considered telling them I had bought the skirt at Goodwill, but why ruin the illusion? I spoke to them for half a minute or so, long enough to know that they really did like the outfit and weren’t just picking on the old drag queen.

Boarded the plane and we got headed for the runway. I say ‘headed for the runway’ because we didn’t make it. They pulled off and parked the plane, then the captain came over the PA with an Australian accent.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we do apologize for the delay, but Philadelphia has sort of a air traffic jam going on and we’ve been told to hold here for about 40 minutes.” And there we DID sit for a little over 40 minutes.
Uggggghhhh . . . .
At last they fired up the engines and we started out again . . . in a big circle and then came right back and parked at the same place.
“Folks, I’m terribly sorry, but right after they cleared us for travel, they have closed the Philadelphia airport. This normally doesn’t last but about an hour. If it takes much longer than that, we may pull back in to the gate and cancel the flight.” And I got up at 3AM for this??
Hmm . . .cancel the flight. Let’s think about this a second. I’m femme, all my male clothes are in my checked bag, my female coat is in my checked bag because I was too lazy to carry it around with me, and I don’t have all of the makeup it would take to do my face if I’m stranded over night. This could end up being very interesting. Isn’t that a Chinese curse? “May you live in interesting times”.
About an hour later, they start the engines but no announcement yet, so you know it’s not good. After we are moving, one of the flight attendants came on the PA, very clearly irritated.
“Folks we were cleared to travel but now we have to return to the gate to drop off ONE passenger!” That was HER emphasis on the word “one”, not mine.
“Again, we are returning for ONE passenger. If you do not care to continue on with us, you may leave the aircraft, otherwise please stay on board and we will depart as soon as the passenger leaves and we get the door closed”.
I’ve been traveling a LOT by airplane for 8 years, and I’ve NEVER heard of them returning to the gate for a single passenger. For that matter, I’ve never heard of them doing ANYTHING to accommodate a single passenger – no holding the plane, not even opening the door if someone arrives as it is closed. I still don’t know the story, but have to wonder . . .
While we were parked at the gate waiting for the people that chose to abandon the plane to get off, I started making calls to see what my options were going to be now that I was going miss my connection. Here I am on the plane speaking to US Airways, and I don’t have a very femme voice, so little doubt I outted myself to everyone around me (assuming I might have fooled any of them to start with). Turns out that we have a lot of flights for options and it was no big deal to move me over to another one, so presumably life is good. It’s just going to be another very long day. Of course I suppose I deserve it given how well everything went, and how early I was done yesterday. Aint Karma a bitch sometimes?

So if you thought my day was bad so far, wait till you hear the rest! In my company we have about 6 field service engineers like myself scattered clear across the US. Half are in the west coast (San Jose) and half are in the Eastern part of the US (Boston, PA), and yours truly is dead center in Austin Texas. We VERY rarely meet, usually only when attending some sort of training together and only after a great deal of preparation and planning. Even in my wildest flights of fancy, it would have never occurred to me that I needed to be concerned about traveling femme because I might encounter one of these gentlemen. It was therefore a GREAT shock for me to get a voice mail when I got off of the airplane in Roanoke.
"Hey Matt, I just finished doing some calibrations a few hours from where your going to be working so I talked to the manager and we agreed I should come get some OJT from you! Call me when you land and let me know where your staying. I know you mentioned Roanoke, so that's where I'm headed."
All I could think of was 'Holy smokes, this can't be happening! What are the freaking odds?'
Well, I thought I might outsmart him a little bit, because while I was flying in to the Roanoke airport, the customer and my hotel were actually in Blacksburg, about 40 miles away. I figured I'd let him continue toward Roanoke, and when I got close to the hotel, I'd call him and tell him where I was. That would give me time to get in, washed up, and 100% male before I saw him. The joke was on me though, because rather than wait on me to call him back, he called the lady that makes our travel arrangements and got the address from her! When I called him while was 5 minutes from the hotel, he told me he was 10 minutes from it! Oh . . . My . . .God. . .! I swear I would have done the Dukes of Hazard proud the way I hit the Holiday Inn parking lot with the tires screaming. I'm not sure the car had come to a complete stop before I'd slammed it into park and was running for the check in counter. Have you ever seen a woman run in a long flowing skirt that likes to wrap around your ankles every step? I must have been a hell of a sight sprinting across the parking lot in my long skirt and 3 inch heels! I swear I'd been in my room less than five minutes, frantically tearing clothes off, stuffing them in my bag, and heading for the shower when he called to tell me he was entering his room! It was so close I'm pretty sure he must have been standing at the counter before I'd even entered my room. I told him I'd had a long miserable day and needed a shower and so I'd see him in 10 minutes. By the time he got to my room I was clean and dry and had everything stuffed in my bag, but I was still nervous as we sat in my room talking. I kept looking around hoping like hell I hadn't over looked anything in my rush - like a bracelet, a shoe, a bra . . .
I haven't had a close call like that in better than 20 years. I think I'm getting too old for this stuff . . .

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Smile, your on Goodwill Camera!

So today I was shopping at one of my favorite Goodwills in boy mode. Good day - I found a skirt and a top I liked and entered the dressing room stall to try the top on. I don't know why, but I happened to notice one of this little camera in the darkened bulbs in the ceiling. My first thought was that the angle was such that they might see the top of my head, but they wouldn't be seeing anything too private. Then I turned and noticed the wall opposite of camera was completely covered by mirror. I check, and sure enough, that camera has a perfect view of EVERYTHING that might be exposed in that fitting room. I chose NOT to try the blouse on there after all . . .

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Akron Ohio and Texas State ID

(I posted this once already but apparently Yahoo messed it up so I'm trying again) I'm major bummed - I could not fix the instrument I was sent to work on this week. My company spent around a thousand dollars to send me to Akron Ohio for a warranty repair - and I failed.
My company is known in our industry as being the exception when it comes to laying people off. When other companies in the Semiconductor industry are very quick to hire when things speed up, they are also very quick to lay off when things slow down. My company on the other hand, is very slow to hire, and (Thank God) very slow to lay people off. Despite that history and an obvious distaste for tossing people aside, my company has laid off about 40% of our people in the last 6 months. This is not the time that I want to be associated with failure. :(
Well, it started out nice enough, with my usual early morning getting ready and sneaking out of the house before my daughter wakes up. Just to give me something slightly different, I grabbed my pretty little Peavey Guitar for this pic:
Akron Ohio 005

Took a few pics and that was the only one I liked enough to keep. Headed to the airport pretty early for my flight, but that's kind of the way I have to do it because I have to be out of the house before my critter wakes up. Along the way, I passed a pretty little spot with trees, and I figured as long as I had the extra time, I may as well stop and take a pic out in the fresh air. As usual, I took several, but as with the above pic, this was the only one I cared to keep. The others were . . . .. . . . not nice . . .
Akron Ohio 008b

In the Austin Airport, a young lady and I were both standing in line at the ATM when she spoke to me.
"Those shoes are cute!" she said with a huge smile. I returned her smile and winked!
"They are cute aren't they? They're one of my all time favorites!"
That was the last pleasant thing to happen on the trip. It seems that either I was broadcasting something I didn't want to, or people were just in a bad mood that day. On the flight out of Austin, I started out sitting next to a woman about my own age. I can't recall what I said to her, but she literally just grunted in reply, and as soon as the boarding process was over she started waving to someone in the front of the plane, and then bolted for an empty seat up there. Not sure if it was to get close to her Friend, or to get away from the ugly drag queen. :(
Got to Akron that night and just felt kind of bummed and so didn't do anything.
The next day, I spent 9 hours straight working on the instrument I was there to repair. No breaks, no lunch, just me, my test equipment, and an Infrared Mass Spectrometer that was kicking my backside. I fixed the problem I was told about before my visit, but then they snuck another problem in on me. I won't bore you (any more) with tech details, but it all boils down to the fact that the repair has to be accomplished using a very large test fixture/bench at the factory, so my trip was a complete waste. My pride would have made me upset about this any day, but with so many good people at my company loosing their jobs, this depressed the hell our of me. It was about 530PM by the time I got to the hotel. I was depressed, had found nothing to do that sounded terribly interesting, and was stomping to my room when a young lady called to me from the dining area.
"Sir? We are having a free happy hour - come on in!"
Hmmm . . . day sucked . . . nothing interesting to do . . . too late to bother dressing. . . why not?
Grabbed some munchies they were offering, had a long island Iced Tea, and then took out the PC. What do you know, I had two or three people that were interested in meeting. The more I thought about it though, I was just too damned depressed to go meet anyone, and besides, I was half way through my second Long Island and the bartender had not been stingy! lol I wrote this in the airport on the way home and it was going to end here, but a few things happened after that.
On the way home from the Austin airport a Texas State Trooper pulled me over. As i was doing almost 10 MPH UNDER the speed limit, this sort of surprised me. He walked up and told me my registration was expired. I'll be damned, but he was right and it expired in Feb. As I'm looking for my insurance he walks to the front of my truck and then back.
"You know your state inspection is even farther out of date?" he asks. I laughed.
"Well I do now and I'd sure appreciate it if you would quite looking for things to write me up on!"
"Well, that is my job you know!" he replied with a laugh of his own.
He saw all of my bags and tool box and asked me where I was coming from, what I do, etc.
In the end he gave me a warning! With sort of a huge smile on his face, he said that technically I wasn't required to have a state inspection unless the car is registered. LOL
So I got home and checked my mail, and what do ya know??!! My state ID is here at long last!
Texas ID