Thursday, November 14, 2002
Ye Gods Doth Smile Upon Me
I don't know why, but they did.
I was late for work again this morning (what else is new), and was doing about 80 northbound on 294. At one point I tried to get around this mini-van and black Pontiac Grand Prix (not the demon worshiping kind, by the way) that I had noticed was driving with me the entire time. They were in the left lane; I was in the center lane. I made my move around a large 18 wheeler in the center lane (passing it on the right), and returned back to the center lane, trying to get in front of the mini-van in the left lane before I came upon the larger van in front of me in the center lane. The gap was too narrow, and the mini-van noticed my move and didn't get off the gas to let me in (fair is fair).
I had to slow down pretty hard since I noticed the gap had shrunk down to the minimum car-length passing gap which I don't like to exploit. The mini-van pulled up alongside me since I had to slow down to avoid rear-ending the slower full sized van in the middle lane. I dropped back to a respectable distance behind this larger van, and then passed it on the right and returned to doing 80 (at least 5 mph faster than any other car on the highway, and a good 25 mph over the speed limit).
After about a quarter mile, I noticed flashing red and blues in my rearview mirror. They were back quite a bit. In fact, they were behind that mini-van I was trying to get around. The cop was the black Grand Prix*. He had a perfect view of my asstastic semi-aggressive driving the whole time, and did nothing about it. He elected instead to pull over the mini-van that was doing 75 the whole time in the left lane, presumably just driving the speed of traffic.
Why wasn't I pulled over? Why? I was clearly breaking the law. I was driving faster and more aggressively than anyone else relative to that cop. I mean, I'm almost insulted and terrified that he didn't pull me over. It's like the cop was saying to me "I'm not going to punish you...I'm going to make this driver pay for your transgressions."
It's like he's some Catholic cop or something. Or maybe he ran the plates on the mini-van and it turned out to be stolen or a known drug trafficking vehicle or his plates were expired or whatever. Or the cop was the hand of god.
Yeah.
* Just FYI for all of you highway drivers: Evidently cops no longer need those rigid foot long straight metal "hey look I'm a cop" antennas that stick straight up out the back of the trunks of their cruisers. They now use what look like cellular phone antennas attached to the rear-window of the cruiser; little black ones complete with the spring-like coil at the bottom. So be forewarned: If you see a car that might be a pig in a plain brown, white, or black wrapper with some out-dated cel-phone antennas, slow the fuck down. It's either some old geezer or a cop.
