A Bit Of Excitement On The Way To Work

Whenever I watch police chases on TV, I always wonder what the people in the other cars must be thinking. Well, now I know!

Yes, I was caught up in a police chase this morning!

I had decided to hop over to the coast for my morning commute since the freeway was getting a bit packed. I take a street that's parallel to the 101, because the 101 has too many stop signs as it goes through Encinitas. The street I take shoots me past most of them.

There IS one stop sign right by the commuter train depot. As I was pulling up to it, I noticed police lights flashing just up ahead, and about five cars stopped right behind it. At first I thought it was an accident, and that I might need to turn down to the 101 anyway, but then three police cars came whizzing up and blocked off the street.

Whoa! What is going ON?

Just up ahead I noticed a car driving erratically towards me on the right side embankment. It was a utility truck! Someone must have stolen it and was trying to make a getaway. This was a car chase!

By this point my adrenaline is pumping and making the hair on my arms stand on end. I thought the truck was going to go right by me, and besides being freaked out that I was in the way of the police cars, I thought, this guy could hit me! Or steal my car! But all of a sudden the truck veered to its left and disappeared over an embankment down towards the train tracks.

The police cars that were blocking the intersection shot over to the grassy area and jumped out to run down the embankment. I’m not sure, but I think the truck must’ve turned over or gotten stuck at the bottom. And I couldn’t see a thing!

We were finally able to move forward, but I kept passing tons of police cars rushing to the scene. I wanted to yell, "Oh, I think they've got it under control with the other 42 police cars already on the scene!"

And then I thought, where the heck are all of these police cars coming from? It was a bit disconcerting to realize that, yes, they are out there in much large numbers than I knew about. You just can't see all of them all until something like a car chase pulls them out of hiding. I think I might not speed as much.

So my usually boring commute turned a bit exciting this morning. And I’m sitting at my desk wide awake.

I’m dying to know why someone would steal a city utility truck! I don’t think it ranks up there with Toyota Tacomas for theft resale value. Unless the thief was just trying to make a getaway with whatever was at hand.

I’m going to try and find a link to the story later today.