Feeling Stressed?

Interesting thing I learned which I hadn't known before, apparently if you live in another country you can apply to get an international license and then come to the US and drive all you want. So when our visitors from overseas arrived at the airport earlier this month, I helped them rent a car. Here are a few crazy stories I will share...

On the first day that they arrived, we had them follow us in a separate car to the hotel where they would be staying. The hotel was actually bit of distance away from our office, but we had not told them this in advance. Well we were driving for a while on the freeway in the fast lane and we looked back and for some reason they were trying to change lanes. Well they couldn't do this due to the traffic in those lanes. Suddenly next thing we know, we see them move into the shoulder and start to speed up to try and pull up to us. Now kids, please don't try this at home, driving in the shoulder is not only really dangerous, it's also very illegal. When they reached our car we signaled to them to go back to where they were. Thankfully they understood and did get out of the shoulder safely. However we got a small scare when we saw a flashing light turn on behind us. Luckily it wasn't the highway patrol, but instead some sort of city vechicle with no real authority. Still though the man driving that truck sure seemed mad. He drove up to the side of our visitor's car and rolled down his window so he could he could yell at them a bit. Then he drove up to next to our vehicle and started to yell at us a bit (why, I don't know, we didn't do anything). Anyways we got to our destination in one piece where our visitors appologized for what they did and said they just wanted to know if we had missed the hotel or something. I always wondered though what would a highway patrol officer had done if there had been one around... Would he get a ticket, I mean how could they enforce it once our visitors returned home?

Ok, next story. I didn't see this one, but one of our visitors recounted it to us the day after it happened to him. Basically he went to a bar in the city to go visit with a friend until it closed. On his way back that night he noticed some flashing lights behind him. It was a highway patrol car! Our visitor turned down his loud music and could then hear the officer on his bullhorn telling him to pull over. I guess after a mile or two he finally did pull over (I'm not clear why he took so long). The officer told him he was doing 97 mph on a freeway with a 65 mph speed limit (our visitor later told us he thought he was doing over 100 for a while, and didn't know the speed limit!?). The officer also told him he could take him to jail for this (not sure if this was true, but sure why not). Our visitor described that he was very scared. He tried to explain to the officer his situation and begged him not to do anything. I'm sure it was a stressful situation (speaking of stress, make sure you participate in the Twelve Sky Stress Test!). I don't know whether it was something he said, or because it's true there's no point in giving a ticket to someone visiting from another country, but either way our visitor got let off with just a warning!

Seriously, I need to get me an international license of my own so I can escape big ticket situations too. Nah, only kidding :P

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