When I was living in San Jose, one of my favorite movie theaters was the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto. Now, for those who do not know, P.A. is one of the more affluent towns on the peninsula which means it has more than it’s share of people who have, shall we say, a sense of self-importance. Further, the traffic engineers in that fair city seem to assign a speed limit five to ten MPH less in a given situation than the neighboring cities do. Nobody paid attention to those lower limits except me; I took a perverse delight when driving around in Palo Alto in my beat up VW, to drive exactly the posted speed limit and let the important-gotta-get there-in-hurry people fume behind me.
Now, the road from downtown to the nearest interchange with 101 is about two and a half miles of 25 MPH two lane road. It’s mostly residential so the low speed actually makes sense. It’s also an old road, besides residential, so it is not well lit at all.
So, I’m tooling along about 11pm after a double feature at 25 MPH with a pair of headlights riding my bumper for over a mile. Suddenly the guy cuts left across the double yellow, punches it to pass me, then swings back into our lane, all in about five seconds – right in front of a cop car sitting dark on one of the side streets. The cop car explodes into life, does the same maneuver, and nails the guy about two hundred yards down the road. He scared the crap out of me and I wasn’t even the target.
When I sailed serenely by the officer was climbing out of his car, clipboard in hand. I resisted the urge to wave to the victim but I couldn’t quell the schadenfreude.
