It began like this...
I was driving out to meet my brother and his wife as they were driving in to town from Las Vegas on their way to Virginia.
As I got to 820, on the west/north side of Fort Worth, I lost the headlights on the BUR. Mind you, it was about 7:45ish PM. I figured I had just blown a fuse or a relay. I hit the emergency flashers and tried as I could to move over to the right shoulder and get out of everyones' way. I finally came to a stop... called my brother and gave him the rest of the directions to Frisco. I then called AAA and had a flat bed tow truck sent. They quoted about 45 minutes wait time... c'est la vie.
I then proceeded to call the wife and let her know what happened. I sat in my car with the engine running and an eye ball placed square in my rear view mirror anticipating having to quickly move. I called sammmy and asked if he could quickly check the :batman: board for me and perhaps try to diagnose the issue.
It was then that the fun really began...
As I was on the phone with sammmy, a police chase went roaring down the other side of 820 heading northeast. A earlier model Mercedes followed by three of Fort Worth's finest. Sirens blaring, sammmy heard this over my phone. I thought nothing of it...
A few minutes went by, and sure enough, the whole chase had returned southwest on 820 right past me and my stranded car. Again, I told sammm that it had just passed me again... "Strange enough...", I thought.
After all this, sammm and I had surmised that it was the retractor fuse (and I just so happened to not have an extra 30amp fuse just laying around...) so I knew I was stuck waiting for the tow truck.
Luckily the truck showed up fairly quickly...
Just then, as the operator is getting my little car on the back of his truck and I'm retelling him the story of the previous chase, lo and behold, the same chase is again headed for us. However, this time, Fort Worth has 7 or 8 cop cars and a helicopter on this guy. And their trying as hard as they can to put the guy into the guardrails... so about after a mile or so the police succeeded in their task. Unfortunately, it was right across from the operator and me.
At this point, both he and I are transfixed on what was going on across the lanes... only to see 5 cops whip out their service pistols and shotguns. Mind you, they have their backs to us... which means the guy in the car, if he had a gun (which we didn't know whether he did or didn't) was going to be shooting in our direction!
Needless to say, you've never seen two complete strangers move that fast and share space behind a tow truck while ducking for cover!
The police yanked the fella out of the passenger side of the Merc and quickly difused the whole situation. And at the same time giving Tony the truck driver and myself quite the story to tell...
Here's the linkie from the Fort Worth Telegram.
And below you'll find some really crappy phone photos...
Lessons learned:
- Thank goodness for 8 years of AAA coverage...
- Carry a spare fuse (or in my case, several!)
- The midnight suns on the police copters are brigher than I thought (I about burned my retinas when it lit us up!)
- Loop 820 by Blue Mound road is where one doesn't want to find themselves stranded at night...
