...and the next Thursday...July17th...

Well ! Thursdays are becoming the days of note , lately ! A friend and I were out again to have a meal by the water...good company , good food , beautiful surroundings . The ride back to our homes was quite a different story ! It was a little after 4pm . Having crossed over the main road to one that would be a direct route to our homes, we'd only gone about a half mile , when a high speed police presence appeared ! Lights blazing , sirens blasting , two cruisers appeared in the traffic behind us and two more coming in the opposite direction...then more appeared (at least 10 !) . Soon , we were in the middle of what felt like a swarm of angry hornets...high speed pursuit of a suspect...weaving in and out of traffic . It was an intense , madly choreographed "dance" . I experienced a strange sense of detachment , as though I was watching a movie unfold and not , in reality , trying to drive through this madness ! The small silver car being pursued , actually passed by us , on our right side...his front bumper loose and sticking out . We were all stopped and witnessed a weird evasive maneuver , where he suddenly swerved right , into the municipal campus , over a curb , into a culvert and across the road into a residential area ! Normally , the police pursuit would be called off , to avoid endangering civilians , but his wheels , disabled by the collision with the culvert , caused his car to collide with a utility pole...and he fled on foot , finally jumping into a nearby lake , where he was apprehended ! It seemed this debacle was alcohol-induced (he was seen earlier actively drinking from bottle and driving erratically almost 30 minutes before he burst onto our scene) . The press release also listed the charges brought against him... almost as long as the details of his extended reign of terror ! The "take away" is a sobering and pointed testimony - It was only by the mercy and compassion of the Most High , that NO ONE WAS HURT OR KILLED ! The potential for this becoming a widespread mass casualty event was extreme , considering all the cars and people who could easily have been harmed by his lunacy !