Lightweight

It was the day before CU started its fall classes. My friend Rachel was in town for a "business meeting" for the new art gallery she was working for. You would have to know Rachel to understand how much entertainment this idea brought me. Anyway. We had spent the evening quietly at an Irish pub called Connor O'Neils located in downtown Boulder. I ordered a coffee and Bailey's.

On the drive home, I may have been speeding a bit down South Boulder Road. The posted speed limit was 45mph. But if you have ever driven this road, especially at night when the traffic is minimal, you understand how impossibly slow 45mph is.

I was trucking along in old Buttercup when I noticed a Crown Victoria pull a fast U-turn and start following me. Knowing the inevitable, I started to pull over, but when the car didn't turn on the red and blues right away, I pulled back onto the road. I started getting distracted a bit by the lights shining from the car on my bumper assuredly running my license plate information. I swerved a bit and sped up without even realizing it. Rachel advised me to pull into a nearby drive way. Too late. The lights came on and I pulled onto the shoulder.

The female officer came up to my window and customarily introduced herself. She asked if I had been drinking that evening. I told her yes, but only one coffee with Bailey's and I had eaten pasta for dinner and consumed a large amount of water with my alcohol. She took my registration and license and went back to her squad car. Only God knows what they do back there for half an hour. You would think that they would realize that if you took the risk of speeding that you probably had somewhere you wanted to be. Anyway. She returned and told me that because I had had a drink that night and that I was speeding and swerving that she was "concerned about my safety". I stepped out of the car with shaking legs as Rachel started laughing to herself.

The cop was new. She hadn't ever given a sobriety test before. She needed back-up. There was a least one other patrol car and perhaps three other officers there to assist her in learning how to hold the flashlight. I stared at the pen point, I walked in a line with my toes to my heels, I even stood on one shaking leg and counted. "One-one-thousand. Two-one-thousand." In my nervousness, I couldn't seem to remember what you said after ten-one-thousand. Eleven-one-thousand? This was one of those things I should know, but there was a chick with a gun holding a bright light in my face and my mind went blank. Apparently I passed the test, because next she picked up the little Breathalyzer. "Here blow into this until the machine beeps." I turned to the other guy who seemed to know what he was doing. "Do you want me to put my lips on it?" By this point, they knew I was sober.

I returned to my car grateful I wasn't being given a DWI or even a speeding ticket, just the little plastic mouth piece from the blood alcohol test as a souvenir. The cop told me a did a good job. I told her she did a great job giving instructions for the first time. High fives all around. Welcome back to Boulder.