Our Angel’s On Duty!

Today was a good day sandwiched on either side of a very scary couple of minutes.

Our morning started out with a pretty leisurely cup of coffee. Even though I had to go to work, I didn’t have to be there until about quarter of nine. So that gave us a good amount of time to relax and wake up, while reading our blogs, forums and anything else that caught our attention! I eventually decided I had to get moving, dressed and headed out to the branch for the morning. Work was good – pretty busy so the day went by fast and before I knew it, it was time to head home for the rest of the weekend.

Harry had been busy all morning, getting everything ready for our quick trip to Gretchen’s. We planned to leave as soon as I got home from work. By the time we got my car packed and headed out, it was a little before 3 o’clock. The trip takes a little over 2 hours, about 2 and a half actually because we usually stop for a stretch break at one of the stops on the Mass turnpike. Most of our trip was uneventful. Most of the traffic seemed to be on the other side, which was backed up for miles before the exit off the turnpike which heads toward New York City.

We got off the Mass. turnpike onto 95, and had about 10 more miles to go before we exited the highway. Here is where today’s trip got very dicey! We were at the exit before ours, and had 1 more mile to travel for our exit. We were in the far right hand lane, since we were preparing to get off the highway, and right in front of us, there was a person getting off the exit before ours. So we were probably already traveling a little slower than we would have been normally, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. As the car in front of us moved onto their exit, we continued on in the right hand lane. Harry wasn’t really accelerating at all, because we were just about to get off anyway. All of a sudden, I could see flashing lights, and I looked ahead to see a MA state police car, traveling on the shoulder, on our side, coming right toward us. My first thought was, there must be an accident behind us….and my second was, wow, he’s going really fast. These thoughts came to me in a split second; really, my most vivid impression was of how fast he was moving. He had to be going 55 – 60 mph. So Harry is braking at this point, but there’s nowhere to go – there’s a car right next to us in the next lane, and we couldn’t move onto the shoulder, because that was right in the path of the police car. And then, all of a sudden! we look over to the left, and there is another car way over on the left side of the highway, going the wrong way on the highway (VERY FAST) and just as we became aware of him, he turned and cut right across the highway (4 Lanes!!!) and right in front of us!!!!! Harry just yelled, Holy $%^#, and slammed on the brakes and the horn. It happened so fast that I didn’t really have time to react at all. I don’t even know what went through my head – I just watched, and prayed that he didn’t hit anything and that we didn’t hit him. Thank God we didn’t, and the guy went right across the grass median and up the exit, with the police car right behind him. Even now, as I write this, over four hours later, I still have such a feeling of shocked thankfulness that we weren’t hurt (or worse) and that nobody was hit by this idiot as he crossed four lanes of traffic going the wrong way on a major highway. I don’t know the end of the story – we have the news on but we haven’t yet heard any of the story behind this police chase. If I find out anything further, I will pass it on another day.

After that very scary episode, the second half of our day was also very nice – a great visit with Gretchen and Schaun. He is almost 18 months old now, and running all over. We had a great meal of lasagna (the picky eater loved papa’s lasagna) and played with our little guy for the remainder of the evening. Now we are in the hotel decompressing after a good day with a few extremely stressful moments.

We are very very grateful to whomever was watching out for us today.