Part three of three: The 2am Run
High speed car chase – there seemed to be police all around, all the way. As I left Oxford there were two car loads of them suspicious of my filling up with petrol, so as I sped off they must’ve radio’d ahead for the guys in Milton Keynes to get to the chase.
To be fair I was not making time that seriously and had been somewhat livened up by the taxi I was following hitting a kerb at 80 and nearly toppling (he was a people-mover thing), its always good for testing your emergency stop technique and as a bonus makes you more awake for those kinds of journeys.
Still, I lost the blue lights on a roundabout in Bedfordshire – thankfully its not illegal to brake hard into the island and accelerate hard out of it, as long as you’re not pushing the speed limits theres nothing they can stop you for – and the close of the run was clear, so all was OK in the end.
The roads at this time of day, midweek, are quite different to how they are at the weekend – most of the traffic is lorries, who are steadily progressing, the less hassle the better from their point of view. There are a few other cars, mostly taxis and police. Those which aren’t either are tired businessmen on their way home from the pub, either so unconfident of their reactions that they daren’t go over 40, or so overconfident they’re pushing 90 on the country roads.