About two or three mornings a week I venture from the house at about 5:45 am to go to my gym to workout. I just kind of get in automatic and somehow, even without coffee, I get there. I’ve been doing this for about 8 years so I’m pretty much in the groove.

Last week one morning, I was driving along in my groove. I passed a Tulsa Police car, and something chirped. It sounded like it was in my car. Now I’ve got all sorts of gadgets that are never very far from me even at that time. All of them make various chirps, beeps, and rings as part of what they do but this was different. I was looking around and trying to figure out what is going on.

I pulled up to a stop light and suddenly I heard from the car to my left and back a loudspeaker going off. I wasn’t really paying attention to what it was saying. I was still trying to figure if the chirp was one of my gadgets or a pre-explosion warning for my car. In my line of business, radios on external speakers are pretty common. If you have a com radio you can switch to an outside speaker so when you are out of your car watching other people work you can hear if your boss is about to show up.

Anyways, then the voice got louder and I looked out and back and the policeman in the car was glaring at me, yelling into his mike, talking about speeding, and checking my spedometer, yada yada yada. And then he took off giving me a hard glare on a swiveling neck as he passed by. I still don’t know most of what he said. I mean I could hear that it was high volume but I couldn’t make out the words very well.

And then I figured it out. I’m very slow at my fastest and I’m glacier speed this early in the morning. He had given me a friendly little chirp from his car to slow me down and I didn’t respond. And, then when he tried to give me a friendly little loudspeaker chat I wouldn’t even look at him.

So I don’t know what the deal is. I am certain that I was not speeding. I am certain that my spedometer works (It matches exactly the speed reading on my gps the few times I’ve checked it.) However, I am certain that I violated a fundamental rule. Never pass a policeman, unless other people are, and further, never ever ignore them. I’m also pretty sure that I had pissed him off somehow.

Not a good start to my day, acting like a dumbass. I’m not sure that this loudspeaker citizen communication program the guy was trying to do works very well either.I suspect that he had a call to go to and didn’t have time to mess with me.

Hey, check out the Tulsa Police Blog. All sorts of stuff on it.