Crystal Pistol
December 5th, 2005, 03:31
I hope this is OK to tell. :D I'll try to keep it clean, it always gets a lot of laughs when I tell it though. :rofl:
As some of you may (or may not ) know, I work a county which has two interstates, and to check all of it takes near two hours and almost exactly 100 miles of driving. One of the interstates goes west and up through a national forest and is lightly traveled, with nothing open at the exits.
On this night, I was working ... you guessed it, "midnight shift" yet again. It was very clear, and very cold this night, temps about 5 degrees and way too cold to be writing tickets unless they were really great ones, I mean something like a DUI or in a wreck ... OK, but too cold to be dealing with blue lights on cab backs or simple speeders at 10-15 over. No, on these types of nights I keep the car running (warmer) and moving usually, listening to the radio, doing things to stay alert like, and warm, and ..... :type:
..... as the prospect of someone freezing is very possible, I check my interstate as much as I can, sometimes making 3 full passes in a night, and I try to make two complete ones in any case when that cold. :)
So there I am, shortly after midnight, car cup full of Maxwell House's best :chug: and my thermos jug full of even more for when that's gone. Heater running steady, AM on back then (probably Art Bell), and I'm going west up the mountain, and there's a car pulled over on the right shoulder just under the overpass for a county road, and I ease up behind it and turn on my bubble light, zip my work jacket, raise my fleece collar, and grab my hat and flashlight and walkie talkie and get out and walk up to the car. The dome light is on as are the 4way flashers, the motor is running. As I walk up on the drivers side, I see the lone occupant is a male, about 30-40 years old, and just as I go to slap the window to get his attention, I notice something else. :eyes:
He is moving his arms and knodding his head as he is looking over towards the passenger side and then I see some extreme porn magazines laid out in the passengfer seat and in the floor, all open to various centerfold type pics. Then I see what he's doing, and he's like "really into it". :yikes: I almost slapped the glass but then I hesitated and thought about it a second, and decided this was just something I didn't want to deal with. I thought that he must have just succombed to an irresistable urge, and it is an almost deserted interstate, and surely if he was really broke down, he would't be doing "that" would he??? :noclue:
I quickly turned and walked back to my police car without interuppting him, and quickly turned my lights out (all of them, even the running lights) and then I eased out into the far left lane away from his vehicle and drove silently, darkly away. :wicked:
Well, I completed that pass, then got called to a wreck, went and worked the wreck, went to the hospital where that driver was taken, arrested him for DUI, took him to jail when the Dr. released him, got my blood samples, saw a magistrate, locked up the DUI for breakfast, and all this took several hours. When finished, I still had over an hour before quitting time, so I decided to hit the lonesome interstate again just because it is so desolate and if anyone breaks down on the 81, they can usually get help or someone will call us, but not so likely on the mountain.
So I head west, and it's very early dawn as I start up the mountain again, and ... damn, there's that car still there. :thinking: No lights on now, no exaust smoke either. The glass is all frosted over with ICE on the inside. It's quiet now, no signs of life. I get all my stuff together and walk up in the even colder morning air, and peck on the glass ... and this guy wrapped in a bunch of blankets and coats with frost on his mustache and beard (I swear, he had ice cycles hanging from his nostrils I think) began scraping off ice on the inside to look out. :wow:
Man, was he cold, so cold he cold hardly talk. :omg: I had him come back and sit in the police car and I set the heat on high and even offered him my half thermos of coffee (he drank it all from the thermos). After he warmed up a bit as we sat waiting for a wrecker, he began to talk. He said he had been there all night, that the transmission went out and then he ran out of gas while waiting, and no one ever stopped. He asked about how often troopers check the highway.
I told him we have a policy of checking interstates once a shift over all, but that we often checked it more often. He asked me why no one checked on him all night long, and I said "I did, but you looked busy and I didn't have the heart to interrupt you" :whistling: and he gave me a funny look, then it dawned on him what I was talking about. :doh: He started stuttering from embarasssment and started to explain that he was passing time, and etc :rofl: ... and before I had to say anything else, the wrecker arrived (thank goodness). :harhar:
I was glad I went back out there before going home! :type:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make Courtesy Your "Code of the Road" ......
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid192/pac8cfa25c048a5bc5b49ed28c8ebdfa1/f1a6f2f7.jpg
...... and whatever you do ... Have a Safe Trip! :fishing:
As some of you may (or may not ) know, I work a county which has two interstates, and to check all of it takes near two hours and almost exactly 100 miles of driving. One of the interstates goes west and up through a national forest and is lightly traveled, with nothing open at the exits.
On this night, I was working ... you guessed it, "midnight shift" yet again. It was very clear, and very cold this night, temps about 5 degrees and way too cold to be writing tickets unless they were really great ones, I mean something like a DUI or in a wreck ... OK, but too cold to be dealing with blue lights on cab backs or simple speeders at 10-15 over. No, on these types of nights I keep the car running (warmer) and moving usually, listening to the radio, doing things to stay alert like, and warm, and ..... :type:
..... as the prospect of someone freezing is very possible, I check my interstate as much as I can, sometimes making 3 full passes in a night, and I try to make two complete ones in any case when that cold. :)
So there I am, shortly after midnight, car cup full of Maxwell House's best :chug: and my thermos jug full of even more for when that's gone. Heater running steady, AM on back then (probably Art Bell), and I'm going west up the mountain, and there's a car pulled over on the right shoulder just under the overpass for a county road, and I ease up behind it and turn on my bubble light, zip my work jacket, raise my fleece collar, and grab my hat and flashlight and walkie talkie and get out and walk up to the car. The dome light is on as are the 4way flashers, the motor is running. As I walk up on the drivers side, I see the lone occupant is a male, about 30-40 years old, and just as I go to slap the window to get his attention, I notice something else. :eyes:
He is moving his arms and knodding his head as he is looking over towards the passenger side and then I see some extreme porn magazines laid out in the passengfer seat and in the floor, all open to various centerfold type pics. Then I see what he's doing, and he's like "really into it". :yikes: I almost slapped the glass but then I hesitated and thought about it a second, and decided this was just something I didn't want to deal with. I thought that he must have just succombed to an irresistable urge, and it is an almost deserted interstate, and surely if he was really broke down, he would't be doing "that" would he??? :noclue:
I quickly turned and walked back to my police car without interuppting him, and quickly turned my lights out (all of them, even the running lights) and then I eased out into the far left lane away from his vehicle and drove silently, darkly away. :wicked:
Well, I completed that pass, then got called to a wreck, went and worked the wreck, went to the hospital where that driver was taken, arrested him for DUI, took him to jail when the Dr. released him, got my blood samples, saw a magistrate, locked up the DUI for breakfast, and all this took several hours. When finished, I still had over an hour before quitting time, so I decided to hit the lonesome interstate again just because it is so desolate and if anyone breaks down on the 81, they can usually get help or someone will call us, but not so likely on the mountain.
So I head west, and it's very early dawn as I start up the mountain again, and ... damn, there's that car still there. :thinking: No lights on now, no exaust smoke either. The glass is all frosted over with ICE on the inside. It's quiet now, no signs of life. I get all my stuff together and walk up in the even colder morning air, and peck on the glass ... and this guy wrapped in a bunch of blankets and coats with frost on his mustache and beard (I swear, he had ice cycles hanging from his nostrils I think) began scraping off ice on the inside to look out. :wow:
Man, was he cold, so cold he cold hardly talk. :omg: I had him come back and sit in the police car and I set the heat on high and even offered him my half thermos of coffee (he drank it all from the thermos). After he warmed up a bit as we sat waiting for a wrecker, he began to talk. He said he had been there all night, that the transmission went out and then he ran out of gas while waiting, and no one ever stopped. He asked about how often troopers check the highway.
I told him we have a policy of checking interstates once a shift over all, but that we often checked it more often. He asked me why no one checked on him all night long, and I said "I did, but you looked busy and I didn't have the heart to interrupt you" :whistling: and he gave me a funny look, then it dawned on him what I was talking about. :doh: He started stuttering from embarasssment and started to explain that he was passing time, and etc :rofl: ... and before I had to say anything else, the wrecker arrived (thank goodness). :harhar:
I was glad I went back out there before going home! :type:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Make Courtesy Your "Code of the Road" ......
http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid192/pac8cfa25c048a5bc5b49ed28c8ebdfa1/f1a6f2f7.jpg
...... and whatever you do ... Have a Safe Trip! :fishing: