Utah, or the place I'd rather not go back to.

Apparently, I have somewhat of a reputation of being a "troublemaker". This reputation precedes me. I don't know how this gets around and not, "Hey, I'm looking for date", but I digress. I say I'm not a troublemaker, but I must agree to a certain extent because the evidence is overwhelmingly against me.......

...so let me tell you how I had an arrest warrant out for me.

But first! Another story that somehow relates!

It's April 2006 and I'm traveling to Provo, Utah to report to the MTC so I can go on my mission.  All is well. With me, is my family. ALL of them, parents included. I'm driving this Franken-van past Beaver City, Utah.... and I get pulled over, because cops there don't have anything else to do.

Speed demon.

I get pulled over for going 90 MPH in a 75 MPH zone. The one non-Mormon cop in all of UTAH isn't moved by my brother's sob story of how I have to be in Provo. But, he's nice enough to drop the ticket to 84 MPH so my speeding isn't a criminal offense. Nothing too bad or exceptionally embarrassing about this except for my sister-in-law dropping the question, "Weren't you using cruise-control?"

Which I was, at 90 MPH.

Anyways, two months and an unrelated one-car accident that I was involved in later(different story), I'm serving as a missionary waiting for my Mexico visa in Logan, Utah. And I'm running around trying to get some investigators to go to an activity that was apparently important at the time.

As it turns out, cops up there don't have much to do there either.

Imagine this, my companion, Elder Ulman and I, in full missionary attire, are pulled over in front of a church building with a female cop. I was driving. Said cop walks up to me and the first words out of her mouth are, "Hello Elder, do you know how fast you were going?" Apparently, being a missionary isn't a "get out of a ticket" card. I was going 40 MPH in a 25 MPH zone. She was nice enough to drop it to 34 MPH so it wasn't a criminal offense.

Zoom, zoom!

Fine, my bad, I'll just pay the ticket, I'll just have to wait a week because of paperwork or what-have-you.

Turns out that the visa that I had been waiting for comes in the day BEFORE I can pay the ticket. I am to leave immediately. What follows is the worst/funniest phone call I've ever made to my parents.

"Hi dad, how are you? Good? Good. Me? Good, good. Yeah, I'm at the airport on my way to Mexico. Oh, my mom's there too? Good, good. Listen, I need a favor, can you guys pay a speeding ticket for me? Yes, I know it's my second one..... I love you?"

Turns out that Utah doesn't like it when you don't pay tickets within two weeks and run away to a foreign country. So, they issued a bench warrant for my arrest. I was a fugitive for about 2 weeks or so.

According to my dad, it's all been taken care of. But I'm not willing to find out.

Moral of the story? Don't go to Utah.

There are worse things out there though.