Location: Downtown Sacramento – 16th to 160
Time: Approximately 2100 hours
Mission: Beat my roommate back to the apartment

Despite the fact that I was in Sacramento and driving through Sacramento, I was feeling pretty good. I had been hanging out with hot chicks all day, no commitments or responsibilities were looming for weeks, the windows were down, Rammstein’s Reise, Reise album was on the stereo.

I pulled up to a crosswalk, quite visibly freaking out four bitter and uptight-looking Sacramentans with the intense, haunting Teutonic lyrics. Totally immature of me to appreciate that… I turned up my stereo.

The light turned green and I hit every other green light after that, continuing to gain speed and threading my way through the traffic until I got to the long straight stretch of Highway 160… I rounded the bend over the river and soon had the car up to 100 m.p.h. when I noticed the headlights of another car behind me. The driver behind me was tracking my maneuvering through the traffic and obviously wanted to race because they were trying hard to catch up to me.

I continued accelerating until I hit 120 m.p.h. At that point the guy was still gaining on me and I realized he was more committed to this than I was. So, I started moving over out of the way and realized that he had just illuminated some red lights on his car. It was at that point that I realized I had been racing a California Highway Patrolman. While fun, it can get awfully expensive in a hurry and so I would not recommend making a regular practice of it.

The officer was actually very pleasant and politely explained that he had pulled me over for my speed (which he had clocked at 117 m.p.h.), diplomatically pointing out that I had been driving in excess of twice the posted maximum speed limit of 55 m.p.h. However, he was kind enough to write on the ticket that I had only been doing 90 m.p.h. and that it was a 65 m.p.h. maximum speed zone (This act of mercy saved me from what would have been a very expensive reckless driving ticket). The fine representative of the law enforcement community then wished me a “fine evening” and was on his way…

Epilogue: I still beat Nicki back to the apartment.