I finally made it back to California.  I have a mixed history with this state.  One of my best friends lives out here, but I absolutely hate the traffic.  And as anyone who lives out here knows, there is almost no public transportation.  I did my best to avoid the valley area since my friends no longer live down that way.  They are further northeast and live in the hills and mountains of Cali.  License Plate and I decided to search out a nice place on the side of the road to have a picnic.  We’d found a gourmet dog food store that sold the tofu (link) treats she loves.

We settled on this nice, hilly area that had a lot of pines and was quite peaceful.  We were out of the way and everything seemed good.  Other than the breeze.  It was pretty cool up there and I wasn’t dressed accordingly.  License Plate didn’t seem to mind at all and while I searched for something warm in the trunk of the car, she went frolicking off into the woods.  As I found a wind breaker at the bottom of my travel bag, I heard a commotion behind me.  Let me tell you, I was surprised to see a sheep being chased by my happy-go-lucky dog.

While I was standing there completely perplexed about what was going on, an even larger noise came echoing through the woods.  All of a sudden a 4×4 was in front of me and the driver was really angry.  He got off his vehicle in a huge huff and came over to get his sheep.  At least I figured as much.  The ATV’s plate read SHEPRD.  As the guy came running up to License Plate, I ran over too to calm him down.  He starts screaming at me about how I had no respect for people or livestock and I’m lucky he didn’t shoot my dog.  At that inclination, I decided this could turn in to a really interesting argument really quick.

Thankfully though, cooler heads prevailed.  I apologized to him for my dog and I asked him if the sheep was fine.  It was and no harm came from anything.  He eventually apologized for being so upset, but he said that he couldn’t afford to lose another sheep.  Times were tough as a shepherd, if I knew what he was talking about.  Having never met an actual shepherd in my life before, I didn’t.  I decided to just agree though, rather than have him fly off the handle again.  While we were talking, a horn sounded in the distance and he said he had to get back.  His boss was looking for him and the missing sheep.

With that, he was off into the woods.  I was left wondering what all had just happened.  At my friend’s house that night, I went online and tried to do a reverse license plate search, but couldn’t find the guy.  Apparently ATV license plates aren’t included in the regular lookup feature.

I came across this NC plate with a North Carolina license plate lookup. It’s kind of hard to read but the plate says “NOT COP”. I’m sure he was tired of driving down the highway and having people in front of him slam on their brakes to get back under the speed limit. Maybe just having the dog hanging out the window would be enough but it’s hard to say for sure.

I came across this plate while doing a Virginia license plate lookup and, while it might be considered a little mean-spirited, I think for the most part it’s just pretty funny. I’m not a big fan of South Park but I’ve seen enough episodes to get the reference.