In 1986 I was a cross country trucker. I was driving from Calgary to Dallas on Christmas Eve and had been fighting a blizzard since Montana. Just south of Denver I broke out of it and hit the first dry road I had seen in days.
287 is a wide 2 lane thru there and it's pretty desolate country. I was the only thing on the road and I was getting pretty hungry. There was my survival stash of munchies in the sleeper, but they were just out of reach from the driver's seat.
I was cruising pretty good and didn't want to pull over just to get what I could almost reach from the seat. So, I pulled out the hand throttle, jumped up and darted into the sleeper. I quickly grabbed some crackers and a can of soda and jumped back into the seat just in time to see a Colorado State Trooper's car skidding sideways in the middle of the road behind me.
Holy ****, I thought I ran him off the road!:O
I hit the brakes and pulled over. Didn't think it would do any good to make him chase me a while. That turned out to be a blessing because he was PO'ed when he got out of the car. He had popped over a hill and met a truck with no driver running 94 in a 55.
He was talking about taking me to jail and impounding the truck. (We couldn't have this happen) I told him I was running a day behind schedule because of the weather and I had 4 little kids at home that hadn't seen Daddy since before Thanksgiving. I had all of their presents in the truck and I was bound and determined to get them to them byChristmas. "There was a little fat man with 8 tiny reindeer that passed me a ways back, and I think I can catch him."
I almost had the guy in tears...almost. He said there was no way he could let me go, but he hadn't completed the citation yet. He knocked the speed down to 88 (2 miles under the limit for wreckless driving and a trip to jail) and added crossing the centerline in it's place. I hadn't run him off the road, but I seriously freaked him out when he saw there was no driver. He thought I'd had a heart attack and the truck was a runaway. He told me to slow down, be more careful and let me go.
I thanked him profusely and quickly walked back to the truck trying my best not to bust a gut laughing. I was not married, I had not kids and there was not 1 Christmas present in that truck. If he had just looked in the cab or looked for a wedding ring my goose would have been cooked. I never paid the ticket and it didn't turn up in the background check when they changed licenses to CDL's either.
