Cruise control

It's standard operating procedure. Whenever I see an opening to overtake another vehicle at high speed, my exhilaration gets the better of me. Having put this talent to good use recently, the fact that I wasn't on the Autobahn escaped my mind just long enough for me to glimpse red and blue lights in my rear-view mirror.\n"Hey, old boy, is it really necessary to drive quite so fast?"\n"More often than you realize, sir."\nThe state trooper took my insouciance regarding traffic laws better than I had anticipated. I noticed a slight grin as he quipped, "Oh, you're some kind of adrenaline nut, huh?" \n"I prefer the term 'adventurer.'" I hoped the pithy comeback would spare me a citation. It did not. \nIt was supposed to be a summer of love. Instead, I found myself boiling with rage while enrolled in fruitless driver-improvement classes learning how to "Stay Alive until 25." (Those poor stiffs at the BMV aren't aiming very high these days, are they?) Still, my sense of rollicking adventure behind the wheel -- an acquired taste, I admit -- has been difficult to disown. \nI must have been no more than 10 years old, but I recall being invited to race a boy older than myself on a moped through a neighborhood of corkscrew streets. I shall not belabor the experience, but suffice to say that all went well until I arrived in my own front yard gripping the throttle with full force. (I ditched the bike in my mother's garden just before it smashed into the brick stones of the house.)\nThe situation worsened steadily once I moved to Europe. More-than-rudimentary knowledge of French was required to pass the driving test, but I got my hands on a secondhand red scooter anyway. I didn't know -- and relished the inevitable moment when I'd find out -- how a Swiss police officer would react upon seeing me produce a Kentucky license without a smirk.\nMy scooter was not quite in mint condition when I moved on to finer (and faster) vehicles. It was at this juncture, encouraged by 007 racing down the hills of Monaco in GoldenEye, that I learned to drive a stick-shift. Alas, I wasn't behind the wheel of a state-of-the-art Aston Martin DB5, but I developed a theory that manual transmissions are exceedingly conducive to rapid taps of the accelerator. Lately, I've noticed a disturbing pattern emerging: to measure by times pulled over, this element has not been taken into consideration, and my car is being unduly penalized. \nSo the question uppermost in my mind is: Why shouldn't I be able to accelerate at my own pace without having to pay scrupulous detail to the ticks of the indicator of velocity? When the officer returned my license this summer (accompanied by a fine), he warned me to "enjoy it while it lasts." I cracked a smile and informed him, with a mix of truth and one-upsmanship, that those are the words I live by.