Monthly Archive for March, 2009

Yes, it is true. I got to ride in the front seat of a Texas State Trooper’s squad car today.

I was on my way back from Austin after the launch party for “On the Road With iV, Season 2″ (more on that trip soon), and I ran into a bit of a problem. The weather has been really nasty, and I was driving in pretty heavy rain, and 41 degree temperatures. My car has a digital read-out that has all sorts of information including how many miles you can travel before you run out of gas. As I was driving, I was watching that read out and noticed at 48 miles, it switched to just telling me “Low Range”. This isn’t uncommon; it usually switches to say that around 40 miles or so. At the time, I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere between Hillsboro and Waxahachie, so I reset my trip milage so I could keep track of how far I could go. The next sign said Waxahachie 25 miles, so I knew I should be good to go with some room to spare. Well, I make it into Waxahachie and don’t see any gas stations on the service road. My GPS has a feature that tells where the next gas station is, and it was telling me I was about 3-4 miles away. No big deal (or so I thought) since I had plenty of range.

Well, at 27 miles on the trip, I notice my car is slowing down, and my gas pedal is doing absolutely nothing. Yup….I was out of gas, for the first time in my driving career. I pulled over onto the shoulder and got my hazards on. I could see what looked like might be a gas station down the road half a mile or more (hard to tell with the rain) and it looked like it might be an abandoned old Phillips 66 (and since my GPS said there wasn’t a station for a few miles, I thought it might be closed). So I pushed my On-Star and asked my advisor if they could tell if that was a real station or not. I have road side assistance, but if that was a gas station I thought I would just walk instead of waiting on the added embarrassment of help coming to give my 30 year old ass a gallon of gas. They confirmed that it was a gas station, and I got out of the car, and headed to my trunk to get out the rain coat I had in the back. FYI- Gore-Tex is the best thing ever. As I am putting on my coat in the cold rain, a black and white Texas State Trooper pulls up.

He rolled down his window, and I let him know that I was ok….just an idiot who ran out of gas, and I was about to walk down to that gas station. The trooper was nice enough to offer me a ride (in the front seat!) to the station. As I sat down in the car, I could hear some automated system in the car reading off my license plate number, saying my name, car type/ year/model and then “Status: clear”.
Jokingly I said “whoohooo I’m Clear!”
Trooper Friendly: “Actually, your registration is clear on your car, but I don’t know about you.”
Then his tone got a little bit more serious, “You don’t have any warrants out for your arrest do you?”
I told him that I didn’t have any, and offered my license to him. He actually said he didn’t need it, but I told him that if I were him, I would want to run my license and handed it over.

He drove me down to the gas station where I got bent over and had to buy a 19 dollar 2 gallon gas jug (can you say captive market?) and 2 gallons of gas. The Trooper offered to stay and take me back to my car, but I told him that I had Gore-Tex on, had been couped up in the car for the last 3 hours, and that the walk of shame would probably do me good. He chuckled a bit, and let me walk back to the car.

Moral of the story: When your GM car says that you are on Low Range….Even if it just told you that you had 50 miles to go…. FILL UP!!!!