Camera 305 doesn't clear. I've pulled it eleven times now going back to July, or ten, close enough, and every single pull comes back the same, haze sitting on the lane like somebody left a filter on the lens, and I want to say fog because fog is the boring word and boring words are what keep the man on the district line from hanging up on me faster, but its not fog, fog burns off by nine some mornings and this doesnt burn off at all, doesnt matter what time i pull it, doesnt matter the season. 305 sits south of Winchester Road on the 15 and its the only one on that whole stretch that looks like this. I checked 302 the same night, same five minutes, clean. 310 too. Headlights sharp on both, road surface you could read a plate off if a plate ever sat still that long, and 305 in between them smeared out like somebody breathed on the glass and never wiped it.

Postmile on this one is six point five zero three. I wrote it out longhand before i noticed anything, six five oh three, and then i turned it around, which is a thing i do with numbers now, same as when i measured the spacing to the inch on the 60 and it held up every time i went back, i turn the numbers around and see if they still mean something on the other side, and backwards its three oh five point six. The camera number with a decimal stuck on the end like an afterthought. I know how that sounds. I know a postmile is just a distance marker on a corridor and an ID is just an ID and there is a whole maintainance-schedule reason the district hands out numbers close together (i called, i got the reason, i always get the reason, i wrote it down anyway because i write down what they tell me even when i already know its nothing... my mother used to check the stove twice, off, off, even after the knob was already at zero, said by the third house it wasnt about the stove anymore, it was just the checking. anyway) but none of that explains why the marker and the ID match digit for digit on the one camera in the corridor thats permanently fogged and not on the two clean ones sitting right next to it.

Somebody is keeping that lens dirty on purpose or the fog is built into the feed before it ever leaves the box, and I dont know which one i want to be true, because one of those is a guy in a truck and the other is something further up the chain than a guy in a truck ever gets sent for. Coincidence? no. a camera does not pick its own postmile. the truck pages are still up if anyone wants to check whether the crew thats supposed to be cleaning district glass is the same one that keeps not fixing my pole, i havent lined the dates up against each other yet.