This is maybe my favorite hike in the Bay Area. Love the view, love the topography, it’s a challenging hike. On top of that, the weather was perfect.

But the real story for the day was what happened when we drove back. We had borrowed a friend’s truck for the day just to do this hike. I’ve seen this friend drive that truck for years, and I know he uses it for work.

Which is why this next part surprised the hell out of me. We’re driving through Walnut Creek after a long day of hiking, and suddenly cop lights come on behind us. I’m thinking “wait, we weren’t speeding and we didn’t change lanes, so wtf are we getting pulled over for?”

An officer walks up to me on the passenger side and says in a very polite and almost meek voice “Hi, I’m Officer Smith of the Walnut Creek Police Department. The reason I pulled you over is that your license plate came up as stolen.”

Something I feel that I should point out is that I’m a criminal defense paralegal, so my first thought was “Oh f*#%. This day is about to get A LOT longer. Which attorney should I try to call first after I get arrested?”

Of course, the first thing I say after is “We borrowed this car from a friend.” As these words are coming out of my mouth, I think to myself “Wow, that sounds wholly unconvincing, and I definitely made this worse.”

The officers then check the registration and the front license plate. Officer Smith walks back up to me and says “Oh yeah, what happened was someone stole a vehicle and switched one of the license plates with this truck. We see this all the time with cars from San Francisco. I will have to take that license plate, though.”

And they let us on our way. Considering what I do for work and what I’ve seen, I feel incredibly lucky to have had such a pleasant interaction with the police during a potential felony traffic stop.

The moral of the story is that you should probably check your license plates more often before you drive somewhere.

There’s also a larger conversation about systemic racism and white privilege here, but I’ll save that for a non hiking specific forum.