I was on my way back to the yard in my work truck, a 3500 Chevy Siverado that carries two 3 yard trash dumpsters on the back, sort of like a forklift on rails that lifts the bins off the ground.
As I was passing the last on ramp just before my exit an old Toyota with a contractors bed and lumber rack with four or five sheets of drywall strapped to the rack came onto the freeway, as he entered the roadway about 150 yards ahead of me and two lanes to the right, four feet of the two top sheets bend up and break, slamming into the car immediately behind him and exploding into gypsum dust.
As I see this happening in front of me, I thought 'wow, lucky it happened ri...' HOLY CRAP!'
A black and white has pulled diagonally in front of me in the number three lane and the guy in the number four lane and stops, just stops! Meanwhile we're already 100 yards past the truck and two cars who pulled over into the breakdown lane as soon as it happened.
Now Officer Flightsuit, complete with tactical holster and badge on a chain flings open his door, storms out of his patrol car up to my passenger window and starts yelling at me because apparently as he pulled his maneuver I threw up my hands in a 'WTF' type gesture...
I was busy trying to keep my truck and four thousand pounds of garbage from slamming into his car or going sideways on the 710 and causing a real headache.
All that weight is up high and the wheel base is short, you do the math.
"What the **** is your damned problem? Can't you see this is a public safety hazard, why the **** are you throwing your ****ing hands up for? Don't you see what's going on here?"
I started to try and explain myself, or at least what I thought happened in this thirty second situation but for some reason I have an angry black man in a uniform with a gun screaming at me about an accident we passed
before he pulled in front of me! I was stunned speechless, I totally had no idea how to react, I mean if I did give him a WTF kinda gesture it was only because I couldn't figure out why he was closing two lanes of freeway traffic, after the principals had moved to the side of the road BEHIND us.
"Get this ****ing truck the **** out of here right ****ing now!"
I slammed down the accelerator and left him in a cloud of diesel smoke, to be quite honest, I was truly frightened by the officers erratic actions and didn't want to give him the chance to 'misinterpret' anything I did and end up getting 'Kinged' on the freeway.
I've dealt with the police more than anyone here who isn't a cop , I guarantee it (maybe, here I aint so sure...
). Fifteen years playing repo man in the middle of the night, you run into a lot of LEO's. Even with a couple of 9mm's aimed at my head in a felony stop, I never really had any fear, the situation always had a certain amount of control to it. You play it out to it's logical conclusion and every one goes away safe and happy, easy peasy. I haven't had to deal with LEO on a regular basis for a few years now but I'm no less a man but damn man, that cop had me shaking and ghostly white in ten seconds time.
