The Luck Of Huntsville Rob

I am the luckiest person alive.

Why, you ask? Because I'm sitting in Huntsville right now writing this, and not sitting in jail in rural Georgia.

I decided to use a friend's route to Atlanta, which goes cross-country over the mountains and picks up I-75 near Cartersville. Beautiful drive through mountains and farmlands, and I reckon that it saved me about a half-hour on my drive. However, the fun came this afternoon when I was heading back to Huntsville from Atlanta.

I was heading north on US-27 from Rome to Summerville. This stretch of road winds over a mountain and is one of those weird mountain roads that sometimes has two lanes on one side and one on another, then they reverse. However, this one is extra weird in that it allows passing in some sections of the road as well. So I'm cruising along, speeding though not excessively (I think I was doing 5mph over the speed limit), and there are a few cars in front of me stuck behind one car that was driving really slow. The one in front is this old Cadillac with an old lady driving it.

Well, I go to pass them. I guess I wasn't paying too close attention to the lane markings because I passed in what I would later find out was a "turn lane." Well, I don't know about it, because it sure looked like dashed lines to me. Anyways, I continue along through Summerville and to the other side of Menlo when I suddenly see flashing lights in my rear mirror. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I was trying to figure out what I did. Sure I was speeding, but surely these people have better things to do than pull someone over for going 5mph over the speed limit. But then I looked in the rearview mirror and saw that it was not one, but THREE police cars. Oh FUCK.

Now, normally (and I say this as if I've been pulled over a bunch of times, but really only twice) it takes the officer a few minutes to come to your door as they run the tags and wait for information to come back. But this guy was almost immediately at my door. So we're already in new territory. Then ...

"Please step out of the car, sir."

Oh hell. And then he tells me he's pulled me over for reckless driving. I could literally feel the blood drain from my face. I was shaking I was so nervous. I was confused because I had no clue what had happened. I mean, c'mon. But it turns out one of the people I passed way back in that "turn lane" was an off-duty police supervisor, who pulled up a few moments later.

Oops.

And then they start asking me questions about whether or not I'm carrying any contraband, and I tell them that all I have is my briefcase and my overnight bag. The officer tells me to wait at the car while he goes to talk it over with the other officer and his off-duty supervisor. After about five minutes they come back and, praise the Lord Jesus, are going to let me go with a (stern) warning: that all the supervisor had to do was say the word and they would take me in, and not to ever do that again.

I get back in the car, and do five UNDER the speed limit for the rest of the drive back.

While the route did save time and was scenic, I think I'll stick to my traditional route of US-431 to I-20 in the future. I still don't know if that was a turn lane or not. Like I said, I'm usually pretty good about things like that. While it may take an extra half-hour for me to get to Atlanta in the future, I think it's a worthwile tradeoff so that I never have to darken the roads of Cherokee County, Georgia ever again.