My Sunday Morning

After a fairly late night of work, I went to bed. I was hoping to sleep in this Sunday morning, but at about six-thirty in the morning, I felt the slight pangs of a headache. After some brief effort to sleep through it, I eventually decided to get up. By eight o'clock, I was off to town.

I realized that this would be the perfect opportunity for a drive. I've frequently enjoyed travelling the back roads of Prince George. The peace and solitude of the countryside helped me clear my mind. I had already travelled north and east of Prince George far too often, so I decided to venture where I had never gine before-- south, down highway 97 toward Quesnel.

I found myself travelling down Red Rock Road West, some twenty to thirty kilometers south of Prince George. The nieghborhood of Red Rock consisted of a long gravel road, with a few houses and, to my surprise, a closed-down elementary school dotted along its sides. The road promised some intriguing exploration, but unfortunately my journey was to be cut short.

I am one prone to travel down side roads. When I saw a red pick up truck pull out of a junction on my right, I followed my foolish exploratory instincts and turned in. Alas, within fifty meters I saw the sign indicating a dead-end, along with a looped arrow which, to me, indicated a turn-around up ahead. Following the road over a small crest I found not a turn-around but a ranch. Dissapointed, and just a little frustrated, I turned the car around and headed back out, only to find the red pick-up barrelling along toward me. Ah, I thought, the man of the manor! He must have mistaken my simple and admittedly rather childish excursion as a visit of greater portent. A trivial, if embarrassing, misunderstanding.

And yet, a dread fell upon me at the thought this man, who knew of me through only the most awkward of contexts, being forced by his own routine to follow me out of Red Rock and into Prince George. I thus decided to turn to the right and continue further down the road, certain that the man in the red truck would break left toward town.

Yet, he did not turn left, but instead followed me to the right. My hands, in fear, clasped tighter to the wheel, and an anxious warmth flushed upward over my face. I wondered, did he sense in my confused detour not merely purpose, but malice? My thoughts raced, first to denial-- surely, he did not think me some burglar, scoping his house like a common vagrant? Yet even a surplus of experience, forged by the fires of common sense into a veritable blade of inference capable of piercing the heavist curtains of doubt, cannot truly hope to penetrate that mysterious force which shrouds the thoughts of men. And when confronted with such an overwhelming incomprehensible vastness, ones own thoughts, like the shodow's of Plato's Cavern, take on a life all their own. My heart raced as the pick-up followed ever closer, my eyes darting rapidly between the road ahead and the persuer behind. My thoughts, like the snowflakes of a winter's storm which first dart about in the wind before crystallizing into the frigid white terrain, converged into a single idea, a single word: escape.

On my left, as though summoned by my fears, another road appeared. Without hesitation, I bent left. The pick-up followed. There could be no doubt now. He was following me. And yet even as I resigned myself to the terrible reality of this misunderstanding I saw the pick-up dart to the right, toward the Red Rock Volunteer Fire Brigade headquarters. And then, a further relief: the Highway! I turned north onto the highway and accelerated; though relieved at the pick-up's departure, I soon noticed its driver deliberating with a pair of uniformed men, no doubt members of the fire brigade. In more rational times, the scene would have suggested the jovial camaraderie of old friends, perhaps even equals, brothers in that fellowship of volunteer fire brigadiers. Yet my thoughts, still trapped in Hollows of Plato, continued to rage on.

"That's the one!" said, no doubt, the pick up driver. "I have his license plate number! Alert the dispatchers! Rally the cruisers! We must not allow him elusion!"

And at that moment, indeed, in my sights appeared the form of a partol car, its side branded by the words "Red Rock Community Patrol," its sparkling electric lights of crimson and azure luminous even in the brightness of this fateful sabbath morn. I pulled to the side, and yet even as the police officer emerged from his vehicle, eliminating all doubt of his intended target, I was overcome not by fear but relief. I had tired of the chase. Now, at the very least, I was allowed an audience for my account of the preceding events, and with it, the chance for redemption. I rolled down my window.

"Sir, were you aware that this is a construction zone?"

I was not. I had no way of knowing that I'd pulled out of Red Rock into a construction zone. But, nonetheless, I was speeding, and I got a ticket for it. The police officer was pretty decent about my fine. He could have been much crueller than he was.

This was the first time I've ever gotten a speeding ticket. My spotless record, ruined!

By the way, the events described above unfolded in the span of about a minute and a half. Still, this story, in all its purple glory, has to be better than Star Trek.