Me n' Sandy Go To The Beach

So for my birthday the family and a few friends rented this really neat beach house we like to go to on the Oregon coast. We planned to stay several days, and we always look forward to these holidays. The core family goes, and then different friends have gone with us at different times. This time my close friend, Sandy, decided to join us. I was pretty stoked, (I love Sandy bunches and looked forward to hanging out with her and my family for my birthday holiday) and Sandy even agreed to take her car, which was fine with me. Now what you gotta know is,,,Sandy doesn't really drive out of town all that much. Oh sure, she runs all her errands in town and all, but when it comes to going out of town, her husband usually does the driving. So for Sandy, well, it's just not really her thing. But this time Sandy said she'd drive. Cool. I planned to relax, and enjoy the scenery.

I remember at one point the thought crossed my mind to warn Sandy to watch her speed especially in Washington County because I knew Hiway 26 was pretty well patrolled. Uhhh, I'd been pulled over...is why. But then I remember a counter thought crossing my mind, something like, "not to worry, Sandy won't be speeding."

HA!

So here we are, on the LONELIEST stretch of highway on Hiway 26. Nothing but two lanes, the coastal range, not a whole lot of cars, and us. And here's Sandy comin' down this longgggg hill, which bottoms out at a crossroads to Vernonia, and Sandy is clippin' right along, let me tell you. At the bottom of the hill I notice a whole pack of cyclists congregated on a parking strip to our right. Immediately after we cleared the intersection we were back in the trees. And then the scenery changed. A car pulled up behind us, and the lights began to flash.

Oh my heck, we were being "PULLED OVER!"

Well, little did Sandy know, but I had just read an email that my daughter had forwarded to me about a woman who had been pulled over in the middle of the night (hey! not unlike our situation - it wasn't night, but by golly we were in the middle of nowhere!) by a FAKE COP. She had managed to talk her way out of a VERY SCARY situation, and as it turned out, just ahead, was a REAL COP who witnessed the false stop. The real cop forthwith arrested the fake cop, who turned out to be a security officer, and yes, that lady was VERY blessed to have gotten out of that in one piece. She found out about it when the real cop drove into her driveway when she got home that night and questioned her about what had just happened. Another woman my daughter works with actually knew the woman who got stopped.

So...here we are, in the middle of nowhere, nothing but trees whizzing by and I'm saying to Sandy,,,,,

"DON'T STOP. DON'T STOP! We don't know who that is! We don't know if that's a REAL COP!"

Now Sandy is panic stricken. (AS AM I already for heaven's sake!) Sandy is considering what to do.

And we keep going.

We pass a driveway, a wee bit of a driveway with no house in sight.

We pass another.

The lights are flashing. Then I hear a siren.

I begin to think, "If we don't stop, this cop is going to start shooting."

I think, "Maybe I need to turn around and show this cop....HEY! It's just two ladies in this car. We're NOT CRIMINALS. We just don't want to stop. We don't know who YOU ARE!!!"

Sandy, now panicky, pulls over, in the absolute worst spot ON THE FREAKING ROAD and nearly runs us off the road over an embankment.

The cop gets out of his car, and no dummy is he. Sandy is so close to the highway that if he came up on HER side, he would probably have been hit by the first moving vehicle that passed. So what does he do? He comes up on my side of the car. Heck, I don't even open the window!! He taps.

I finally......open the window, and the first thing I say to this man is, "You don't know what we've been through!"

Sandy is asking him what we're being pulled over for. He lets her know she was doing over 75 miles an hour coming down that grade, right past the cyclists, and explains all the basic rules of the road to her. He asks for her insurance card, which of course she doesn't have an updated one, her registration, which of course she asks me what that is, and I suggest it MIGHT be in the glove box.

And me, I begin to explain to the cop about why we did NOT want to stop and THE EMAIL.

Well, guess what?

This cop looks at me and says, "I know about that email. You see I was the officer who arrested that security guy. And if you had read the rest of the email you would remember that it said if the car had RED AND BLUE LIGHTS, it was really a police car, Madam."

I think I shrank to about the height of a very small bug.

But, the good news is, that cop, bless his heart, only gave Sandy a warning.

And we had a GREAT TIME at the beach....and a GREAT STORY to go with it.

What a birthday!