By then the race was in progress for a few hundred miles starting from the concrete channels of Michigan and onto the open spaces surrounding the equally empty freeways of Ohio. The I-90 did not seem like a popular highway early in the morning of Monday, Memorial Day. That was a good thing for the 3 participants in this struggle for cross-country supremacy as my small but peppy Korean blade, a silver Kia Rio, a newish Ford Focus in white carrying a Latino family and a lumbering typically blue Ford F-150 truck were eager participants in this game of on road one-upmanship. As it turned out, none of us were destined to win this face-off. It was won by a white Dodge Challenger, that spoilsport of a cop car.
All 3 of us had slowed as soon as we had seen him on the horizon poking his nose out of a split in the divider but obviously someone had been keeping a tab on us for a while. The cop car just hopped onto the highway right behind me and begin flashing its psychedelic lights sounding that game-ending wail. I pulled over onto the side of the highway muttering under my breath and waited for the inevitable tap on the window. An Ohio highway patrolman in all his livery walked upto my car and then proceeded to give me the most extraordinary reason for a ticket. This incidentally was my first run-in with the law (and hopefully the last) and I sure couldn't have predicted anything on these lines.
Slapping me with a $160 speeding fine, the cop said "Sir, you were doing 80 in a 65 zone. We had to issue a ticket because a lot of deer are being killed by speeding cars in this area."
I was aghast but I couldn't bring myself to ask the one question that I should've put to the cop
"Sir! Do I look like a killer to you?"
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