Last week I had a rude awakening. My morning commute usually starts a little before 6am and I'm usually in the office by 6:10. That is the only way that I can beat traffic and not have my commute take 45 minutes each way. I really like having the extra time to work on car projects or go for a mountain bike ride in the afternoons. Getting off work at 3pm is definitely a plus.
The other added benefit has been the lack of police patrolling on Rt. 50 through Arlington. At 6am, there's a few cars on the road, but I've never seen a cop. I don't mean never in the figurative way... like you see one now and then, but mostly you don't. I mean that I had literally NEVER seen a police officer out at that hour of the morning.
Can you tell where this story is leading?
Rt. 50 is a 45mph zone from my house all the way to DC. The flow of traffic is usually going 55 if the stop lights aren't making us slow down. As usual, I'm blending with traffic and slowly working my way up to the front of the lines. JUST as I pull to the left lane to make my way past a guy in a pickup truck that must be sleepy because he's barely keeping it between the lines, BLAMMO! There's a cop in front of me and I swear he's just nailed me. I'm kicking myself for doing almost the same damn thing that I talked about in Part I. I slow down a bit and pull to the right. The cop is pulling out as I'm JUST getting to a spot to pull into the right lane. His lights are about to go on when this guy in a Dodge Magnum decides to prove that his car indeed has a hemi in it. He's too impatient to be behind me as I slow down to get pulled over. The Magnum flies out of the right lane and flies across the middle lane into the right and absolutely guns it. He's got to be doing over 70 by the time the cop flips his lights on.
Mana from heaven.... I'm forgotten again. I'm now much wiser. I'm not going to let anything like this happen again. Right????
Pete
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