Friday, July 19, 2013

eventful day

1.
I could have been pulled over by a policeman this morning. Didn't happen, and I'm still not entirely sure why, although I do have a theory. The guy had me dead to rights. I was tearing down Route 66 at 80 miles an hour (that's about 130 kph for you metric-heads) when I saw two cars up ahead—one in the left lane and one in the right. The one in the left lane was behind the one on the right, but was gaining slowly. If I planned to get ahead of the dude on the left, I'd have to gun the engine, race past, and dodge in front of him before there was no space left for me to pass. I was in the right lane. As I got near the car on the left—a weatherbeaten Dodge sedan with no hubcaps—it started to accelerate, which was an asshole thing to do. I gunned it harder and blew past the car at close to 90 (145 kph), at which point it honked its horn, right before I passed it and dodged in front of it. Once in front of it, however, I looked in the rear view and saw to my horror that the car had flipped on what initially looked like police lights.

I immediately slid back over to the right lane (passing the right-hand car in doing so), but kept going 80, mainly because I wasn't sure whether the guy was really a policeman. I had my doubts. My non-American readers may not know this, but in the Commonwealth of Virginia, police-car roof lights are invariably blue, emergency-vehicle roof lights are red, and maintenance-vehicle roof lights are yellow. The lights I saw in my rear-view mirror were red and white—emergency vehicle colors, not police colors. Still tearing along at over 80, I saw that the guy made no move to pull me over; he simply pulled ahead of me again and held his position in the left lane. Thus we drove, holding our relative positions at over 80 miles an hour, both of us in flagrant violation of the 70 mph speed limit. Tentative conclusion: this was a dominance game, not law enforcement. That's my theory, anyway: the guy was more of an angry paramedic than an actual cop. He honked, which is not something your typical policeman does when pulling you over (never in my experience, anyway). He failed to pull me over despite the fact that I was speeding right next to him. Finally, his lights weren't police lights. In retrospect, I don't think that dickhead could have pulled me over.

2.
YB's office tricked me: I had expected to have only two classes today, but instead I was given three: six hours' work instead of four hours'. This turned the rest of my day upside-down: I had hoped to have plenty of time to box things up once I got back home early, but since I've gotten back at a more or less "normal" time, I'm tired and less motivated to do any boxing. On top of this, I found out that my two Korean-language girls will be coming in again for a lesson on Monday, instead of the expected Wednesday. This puts pressure on me to crank out more material for the girls, and to do so much sooner than I had expected.

So how's your day been?


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2 comments:

Charles said...

"So how's your day been?"

Yesterday was pretty decent. Got some quality work done, and recovery seems to be coming along.

Thanks for asking.

Rhesus said...

"So how's your day been?"

Hot. Sweaty.