Easily entertained

A couple of nights ago I surfed over to CNN and saw a "Live! Happening Now" banner that said California police were chasing a woman in a stolen U-Haul truck.

I confess that for a moment - just a teeny, tiny, fleeting moment - the thought came to my mind that Julie had flipped from the stress of moving across the country in a U-Haul, had hi-jacked the truck and was headed for who knows where. How silly of me.

Turns out it was a woman in LA, and sure enough, she was tooling down some major freeway in a U-Haul truck, passing cars right and left as she wove through traffic. The feed was was from a TV helicopter; no audio, just a continuous picture of this truck racing down the freeway. Now we've all seen news clips like this - some dude eventually heads up a one-way street, inevitably hits a car or two, jumps out of the car and runs through a backyard or two while the helicopter camera stays right on him and then the police tackle him, handcuff him and haul him off to face justice.

S0 I'm thinking, okay, I'll watch until the dramatic ending, which will be soon, right? It is late afternoon in LA; she's going to hit something pretty soon. Wrong. She successfully navigates through all the traffic and finally ends up on a four-lane highway heading up the coast. I still haven't seen any cops in pursuit so I'm wondering what kind of chase this is. Finally, the camera pulls back far enough for me to see a couple of motorcycle cops, leisurely following at distance. They eventually get replaced by a black-and-white, then another.

Meanwhile, the U-Haul lady is making time on the highway, mostly by driving down the the center turn lane. The camera gets close enough to see her in the cab and she looks like this is an everyday occurrence for her. She's calm, cool, and whipping through rush-hour traffic like a pro. She comes to the next community up the road and the highway turns into a city street, complete with intersections, but it's no big deal - she blows through them all.

Back on the highway, you now begin to see evidence that the cops have called ahead and most traffic has been pulled over - a la the O. J. Simpson chase. You even see local police cars in the middle of intersections, stopping all traffic to let her go by. In the mean time, the black and whites are being very cool about this - no hot pursuit, no dare-devil maneuvers. They just hang back, waiting for the inevitable.

Finally, you see evidence that the cops have laid down a nail strip - the truck starts weaving back and forth and slows to a stop. The woman hops out, makes a run for it and it ends up like paragraph 3 above. All in all, it only took an hour and a half from the time I started watching.

An hour and a half! You've got to be kidding! I watched this loony lady drive a U-Haul truck for an hour and a half? Oh, well. It was cheaper than a movie.

And if you want to cut to the chase - so to speak - here's the last three or so minutes.