Ready for some crazy shit?
It is November 6th, 2006. I just flew back home from Chicago and my friends Adam and Jessie came with this dude Brian to come pick me up. Brian is an acquaintance with a really fast car (Black Turbo WRX Impreza) that he likes to show off. We drive away from the airport and everything is fun, we kinda go offroading by accident one time because the road we were on just ended and he was going too fast to stop. That was pretty intense, I screamed and took cover as we hit a bump and took some air and crashed into a farmer’s field, but everything was fine, the car wasn’t even scratched. That was just a Brian thing to do… we had gone offroading in fields around Greeley before. We laughed a lot, reflected on our current lives, and continued our journey…
As we were driving up highway 85 at speeds between 75 and 110 miles per hour, the inevitable happened. We passed a cop on the road and Brian failed to slow down enough to not attract their wrath. So he speeds up when he realizes it was a cop car.
100… 110… 120… 130….
The lights on the cop car begin to flash.
Brian does not slow down.
We, the passengers, begin to realize what is about to happen…
Adam was the first to vocalize his fears.
“Brian, what are you doing? Stop, dude!”
“No.”
“Brian, pull over.”
“No, man, I can outrun them! Trust me!”
“Brian, you can’t run from the police! Pull this car over!”
Brian refuses again and again. I try to persuade him as well, but to no avail.
Jessie and I are basically in shock. I swear quietly to myself and shrink back in my seat. My heart is racing as fast as the cars are. Then Jessie begins to panic.
“Oh my god! Oh my god! Brian what the fuck! I can’t go to prison! I have an unpaid ticket!” She begins to cry. “Let me out of the car!” She reaches to pull the door handle.
I have found out in a few recent occasions that I have moments of unreal clarity in times of emergency. At these points, it becomes apparent to me, without thinking, what is the most important thing to say or do at that time. Now, the most important thing is Jessie.
“Jessie, listen to me.” I maintain a calm voice and reach out and touch her in the front seat. “You’ll be fine, Jessie. You aren’t going to get in trouble for this. We’ve all told him to pull over, and he won’t. We aren’t at fault. The best thing to do right now is to stay in this car. Just calm down, Jessie.” The words come out without much thought, but they seem to have the desired effect. On her at least. I glance back and see another pair of flashing lights. Oh shit.
Brian decides that the best thing to do is to get off the highway. He waits for the next turn, which turns out to be a left turn lane, and speeds into it… and almost hits the car parked there with its lights off. We scream and look back, it appears to be another cop car. Thank god he was able to slow down and swerve to the other side of the highway. Thank god there aren’t any other cars on the road. Thinking of god so much gets me praying. I say a prayer for strength and safety. I just can’t believe this is actually fucking happening right now.
The next turn opportunity is on the right, and we skid around it. Great. A dirt road. Could this get any worse?? We achieve ridiculous speeds again, made even more ridiculous by the fact that we are now not on pavement. The flashing lights are still not far behind. I don’t know what to think… do I want him to get away? Probably. Do I think he will? Probably not. What the hell is even going on right now….. Brian is blowing through stop sign after stop sign. As we turn a corner onto an even smaller and less drivable gravel road, one of my favorite songs from Brian’s mix CDs comes on – - Wu Tang Clan, Gravel Pit. I smile at the irony. Is this actually kind of cool? Maybe just a little…
The chase seems to go on forever, and we continue to plead with him to stop this insanity.
“Brian, just stop the car, man!” Adam yells.
“I can’t! I’m desparate!” This is a bizzare and frightening thing to hear. Ok, maybe it’s not cool.
Jessie continues to panic, and I continue to shrink into my seat, yet find the words to keep her from losing it completely.
“Let me out, PLEASE!”
“Jessie, NO, stay in this car! Do not get out. We’re in the middle of nowhere! You need to stay in this car right now. We need to stay together.”
I’ve never had this kind of adrenaline rush, ever. I feel my pulse, which is beyond excessive for just sitting in the back seat of a car.
The cops are still in view as Brian’s tires find a stretch of pavement. He speeds up to the fastest speed yet. I’m not looking at the spedometer constantly, like Adam is, but I can tell. Any trace of a smile is now miles away from my face. Jessie is calling her best friend. “I love you, I think I’m about to die.” I recall a story about one of my mom’s friends crashing in a country intersection and dying instantly. I see cars on an intersecting road ahead and I start screaming.
“Slow down! SLOW DOWN DUDE!” Jessie also screams more to be let out.
I see the pavement end ahead.
“You need to slow down! Slow the fuck DOWN!!”
I see a turn in the gravel road ahead of that.
“SLOW DOWN NOW!“
Luckily, Brian has heeded my words.
Unluckily, he has heeded them too late.
As we speed into the turn, we are going too fast to stay on the road. I knew this was coming. I brace myself. The other side of the car slams into the dirt embankment, and I feel pain as my hip slams into the seat belt buckle, but only very brifly. I’m not thinking about that right now though. Jessie’s seat belt is off now and she’s screaming to be let out worse than ever.
“My glasses!” Adam says. For some reason, this REALLY scares me. I feebly attempt to help Adam find his glasses on the ground. Fortunately he is able to find them while being blind and I feel a slight wave of relief. Nope, that didn’t last long… Jessie is still crying to be let out. Now, I completely agree with her. We all are yelling at him to stop the car over and over.
He finally listens, because the cops are out of sight behind a hill.
“OK! I’m stopping! Get out!”
I grab my bag which is still on the seat between Adam and I, and as soon as the car is going slow enough, I open the door and jump out. I’m the last one. I don’t even have time to close my door before he speeds down a different dirt road. It closes itself with the acceleration. I glance back to find Adam and Jessie, and Adam is following Jessie who is running into the nearby field. Jessie trips and falls, and Adam and I lay down with her because the flashing lights are coming over the hill. We lay completely still as the car comes up to the intersection where he let us out. And stops. Not 100 feet away. He turns off his car and gets out. We can’t fucking believe it. “What is he doing…” Adam whispers.
Another cop drives up and gets out as well. We hear them talking… and laughing. This throws us off.
“Do they see us…?”
We can’t really look because we’re flat on our backs, looking at the sky. The stars and the clouds and the moon are all very pretty tonight.
“I’m so scared.”
I’m shivering worse than I ever have in my life.
“It’s so cold.”
The cops keep talking.
“They just said ‘three in the field,’” Jessie whispers.
“Are you serious? Can you really hear them?”
We’re getting too cold to lay there any longer anyway.
“Let’s just go. Ready?”
Yeah, we realize that we don’t even know why we were hiding in the first place. I guess when I wasn’t in immediate danger anymore I stopped my miraculous emergency clear thought. We walk up to the car, and see that his back tire is off. Duh.
Of course Adam is the one to speak up. “Hello officer.”
He looks back. Oh man, he didn’t have any idea we were even here. Fucking duh.
“Oh, hello there..?”
“Uhh… You know that car you were just chasing?”
“Yeah…”
“Uhhh… we were in it.”
“You were??”
So we get in the back of the cop car to warm up, get out, smoke, fill out statements, laugh, cry, ask questions (finding out that we were clocked by one of the cars at 127 MPH, and that Brian will receive 4 felony counts; 1 Evasion and Eluding, and 3 counts of Reckless Endangerment… one for each passenger) and see a fire truck and an ambulance drive by. Brian is taken away in the ambulance. “Is he alright?” we ask. “Oh, he’ll be fine,” the cop says with a cop-like smirk. We wonder. Turns out Brian crashed again just a few yards away from where we got out. Nothing bad, we would learn, but it’s still kinda scary. After everything is cleared up and the cars are towed, we get a ride home from the nice young officer who chased us. We tell the story about Creepy Brian’s HIGH SPEED FELONIES to a large group of friends multiple times. Nobody can believe it.
So it turns out he actually got 6 felonies… 3 for us and 3 for also endangerment of the cops that chased him. Oh and they found narcotics in the car.
I’m thankful to be here… and I’m thankful to have my moments of clarity.
Sorry!