This weekend I was in Sacramento driving down one of their super nutso freeways. Speed limit was the standard 65, I was doing a pretty reasonable 70 (or so....)

Anyone who's ever driven on a urban Cali freeway will know that unless it's at a dead stop due to rush hour, going the speed limit is not an option. If you plan to actually do 65, you'd better be in the slow lane, and then you better plan to have cars with aangry drivers stack up behind you. When a freeway in Sacto is actually moving, as it was Sunday afternoon, 80+ is more the norm for the vast majority of cars on the road...

Anyway, I'm clipping along doing my 70 (or so) and I see a plain looking dark blue sedan on the shoulder with its hazard lights flashing. I think nothing of it, someone stopped to talk on their cell phone or has car trouble. I was 2 lanes over from the shoulder, so it didn't trigger any braking on my part.

As I get closer, out of the corner of my eye I see someone dressed in tan standing on the passenger side of the car, away from traffic. I look again, and, hey, is that a CHP uniform? It is!

And what the hell is that he's pointing at me?!?!

It didn't look like the "radar guns" the motorcycle cops point at you from behind a bush. Those are sleeker and smaller. This thing was a large, silver-gray contraption with a clear plastic business-end, and it looked like there was some sort of a camera lens under it!

After I drove by, I watched him for a bit in my rear view mirror. He just went right back to pointing it at car after car after car and didn't look like he was actually planning to go after anyone. It kinda looked like he was... Taking pictures!

I remember from a trip to Canada some years ago that they have these radar gun/camera combo thingies mounted periodically on the side of the road. You go one mile an hour over the speed limit, it snaps your picture and you get a ticket in the mail. Consequently everyone there drives about 10 mph under the speed limit so as to not get nailed by one, and it takes you forever and a day to drive 3 blocks.

Could this be a portable version of one of these? Is CHP paying the governator's salary by parking a cop on the side of the road with a camera-radar and having him "write" 500 tickets an hour?

Do I have a ticket coming in the mail?