High-Speed Dirt, Bitch
Right now I'm at home waiting for the washer reparman to show up.
Homeowner's insurance is a lovely, lovely thing; it's better than an
apartment's maintinence van, and although there is of course extra cost
involved, the customer service is so much better.
So while I'm waiting, I'll tell you about the violent end to the high-speed chase I witnessed this morning. Bet that got your attention, eh? Grab some popcorn and settle in.
It happened during my last run, when crossing over Stockton Boulevard, I noticed that there was a city police car behind me, which kept pace as we wound our way through the avalanche of construction taking place on Fruitridge Road. Once I pulled over at about 62nd Street to make a stop, the car went past and up ahead.
When I arrived at 65th Street and Fruitridge, a large four-way intersection, I noticed three peculiar and unsettling things:
1) The police car that had been behind me was now pulled over to the right side of the road just before the red light and the cop was talking on his radio. As I moseyed alongside him, he paused briefly to look up at me, then went back to his conversation.
2) There was a California Highway Patrol car on my left, standing by at the corner on 65th Street itself just before the red light.
3) A third SPD black and white was in effect to my right on 65th Street, directly opposite from the CHP.
Uh-oh, I thought, surveying the presence of the law enforcement personnel and feeling the emotional barometer in the air switch from relaxed all the way to thirteen o'clock. I've got a real bad feeling about this. Yes indeedy, Jesse is not happy about this situation.
Ding! One of the passengers wanted the stop on the other side of the street and, as befitting a professional driver who fears being pulled over as much as Michael Savage fears being psychologically evaluated, I was the soul of caution. I signaled well in advance, began to ease over--
--and heard a siren behind me.
No! Come on, goddamnit! I didn't do anything wrong! In fact, I was being Mister Careful in spades, you can't do this to me! No!
So I looked in my drivers' side mirror to see...
...a gray Monte Carlo barreling down the street? My eyes popped. I mean, this car had to have been going at least sixty miles an hour, on a road that is zoned at a relatively sedate forty. And not only that, but there was a cop car behind in hot pursuit, and it was trying to make the turn onto 65th Street without slowing down. And this was most assuredly not going to happen. Not without a crash, and guess who was most likely in the path?
"Oh shit!" I yelled helpfully, alerting my passengers to the fact that something was the matter. "Oh shit!"
Oh shit, as it turned out, was indeed the right way to express myself. As the tires of the Monte Carlo skidded out from under the chassis, it slid sideways and out of my field of vision whereupon I heard a dull BANG that as a veteran of the road, could only mean one thing. Contact had been made with something large and metal.
"Holy shit, I gotta see this!" I hooted, leaping out of the chair and onto the sidewalk. I'm fairly sure in Bus Driving 101 this is covered as one of the inappropriate ways to handle a situation just like this, but what the hell. I got out of the bus and saw that in the time it had taken me to holler and jump, the CHP had jammed the push-bars of his vehicle up against the trunk of the Monte Carlo and was holding it firmly in place against the large pole it had crashed into. Tires spinning and smoking, the Monte Carlo was attemtping to back out and shove the CHP interceptor away to no avail. That in itself was impressive; after all, the Chevy Monte Carlo has a V-8 engine and the modern versions are used for NASCAR racing. It's a powerful vehicle, and--
Holy shit again--the Monte Carlo's doors were opening and two guys were jumping out AND RUNNING TOWARD THE BUS!
"Everybody back in the bus!" I screamed, unaware that it was only me who was outside. Everybody else, wiser than their driver, had elected to stay inside but they had smashed their faces up against the windows to see what was going on. We slowly pulled away from the curb and I just had to glance into the rear-view mirror to see what was going on. I had to, right?
The two guys weren't running to the bus after all, correctly anticipating that their chances of escaping in such a slow-moving behemoth were next to none unless they wanted to take hostages (scary thought, eh). Insetad they were taking flight by foot across a muddy field with three burly linebacker-sized cops in pursuit. The first guy got maybe ten yards before he went down like a pole-axed cow, and one of the cops dropped onto him like a ton of bricks. Good-night.
The second guy actually managed to make things interesting by zigging and zagging his way through the bog, until he relazied there was no way in hell he'd outrun them on that kind of footing. He then sprinted for the road again, piled through the drainage ditch and threw himself upon the chain-link fence seperating the swamp from the road. He began to climb, got halfway up... and that's when the two cops arrived, yanked him off the fence like a disobedient cat off the curtains and delivered a haymaker to his jaw on the way down that knocked all the fight right out of him.
As we left the scene of the Waterloo, I turned on the bus' internal microphone, whistled softly and said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, this episdoe of Cops was brought to you by the California Highway Patrol and the Sacramento Police Department. Woooo! Exciting, huh?"
Moral of the story: Hollywood has it dead wrong. If the cops can get somebody in front of you, you're going to get caught, and you're going to (very rightfully, I think) get your ass kicked black and blue by the boys in blue. High-speed chases are, quite simply, a stupid idea for the crooks.
So, with that said... how was your morning?
So while I'm waiting, I'll tell you about the violent end to the high-speed chase I witnessed this morning. Bet that got your attention, eh? Grab some popcorn and settle in.
It happened during my last run, when crossing over Stockton Boulevard, I noticed that there was a city police car behind me, which kept pace as we wound our way through the avalanche of construction taking place on Fruitridge Road. Once I pulled over at about 62nd Street to make a stop, the car went past and up ahead.
When I arrived at 65th Street and Fruitridge, a large four-way intersection, I noticed three peculiar and unsettling things:
1) The police car that had been behind me was now pulled over to the right side of the road just before the red light and the cop was talking on his radio. As I moseyed alongside him, he paused briefly to look up at me, then went back to his conversation.
2) There was a California Highway Patrol car on my left, standing by at the corner on 65th Street itself just before the red light.
3) A third SPD black and white was in effect to my right on 65th Street, directly opposite from the CHP.
Uh-oh, I thought, surveying the presence of the law enforcement personnel and feeling the emotional barometer in the air switch from relaxed all the way to thirteen o'clock. I've got a real bad feeling about this. Yes indeedy, Jesse is not happy about this situation.
Ding! One of the passengers wanted the stop on the other side of the street and, as befitting a professional driver who fears being pulled over as much as Michael Savage fears being psychologically evaluated, I was the soul of caution. I signaled well in advance, began to ease over--
--and heard a siren behind me.
No! Come on, goddamnit! I didn't do anything wrong! In fact, I was being Mister Careful in spades, you can't do this to me! No!
So I looked in my drivers' side mirror to see...
...a gray Monte Carlo barreling down the street? My eyes popped. I mean, this car had to have been going at least sixty miles an hour, on a road that is zoned at a relatively sedate forty. And not only that, but there was a cop car behind in hot pursuit, and it was trying to make the turn onto 65th Street without slowing down. And this was most assuredly not going to happen. Not without a crash, and guess who was most likely in the path?
"Oh shit!" I yelled helpfully, alerting my passengers to the fact that something was the matter. "Oh shit!"
Oh shit, as it turned out, was indeed the right way to express myself. As the tires of the Monte Carlo skidded out from under the chassis, it slid sideways and out of my field of vision whereupon I heard a dull BANG that as a veteran of the road, could only mean one thing. Contact had been made with something large and metal.
"Holy shit, I gotta see this!" I hooted, leaping out of the chair and onto the sidewalk. I'm fairly sure in Bus Driving 101 this is covered as one of the inappropriate ways to handle a situation just like this, but what the hell. I got out of the bus and saw that in the time it had taken me to holler and jump, the CHP had jammed the push-bars of his vehicle up against the trunk of the Monte Carlo and was holding it firmly in place against the large pole it had crashed into. Tires spinning and smoking, the Monte Carlo was attemtping to back out and shove the CHP interceptor away to no avail. That in itself was impressive; after all, the Chevy Monte Carlo has a V-8 engine and the modern versions are used for NASCAR racing. It's a powerful vehicle, and--
Holy shit again--the Monte Carlo's doors were opening and two guys were jumping out AND RUNNING TOWARD THE BUS!
"Everybody back in the bus!" I screamed, unaware that it was only me who was outside. Everybody else, wiser than their driver, had elected to stay inside but they had smashed their faces up against the windows to see what was going on. We slowly pulled away from the curb and I just had to glance into the rear-view mirror to see what was going on. I had to, right?
The two guys weren't running to the bus after all, correctly anticipating that their chances of escaping in such a slow-moving behemoth were next to none unless they wanted to take hostages (scary thought, eh). Insetad they were taking flight by foot across a muddy field with three burly linebacker-sized cops in pursuit. The first guy got maybe ten yards before he went down like a pole-axed cow, and one of the cops dropped onto him like a ton of bricks. Good-night.
The second guy actually managed to make things interesting by zigging and zagging his way through the bog, until he relazied there was no way in hell he'd outrun them on that kind of footing. He then sprinted for the road again, piled through the drainage ditch and threw himself upon the chain-link fence seperating the swamp from the road. He began to climb, got halfway up... and that's when the two cops arrived, yanked him off the fence like a disobedient cat off the curtains and delivered a haymaker to his jaw on the way down that knocked all the fight right out of him.
As we left the scene of the Waterloo, I turned on the bus' internal microphone, whistled softly and said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, this episdoe of Cops was brought to you by the California Highway Patrol and the Sacramento Police Department. Woooo! Exciting, huh?"
Moral of the story: Hollywood has it dead wrong. If the cops can get somebody in front of you, you're going to get caught, and you're going to (very rightfully, I think) get your ass kicked black and blue by the boys in blue. High-speed chases are, quite simply, a stupid idea for the crooks.
So, with that said... how was your morning?