Now I honestly don't know how many of you this sign would affect but...

I attended a safety meeting yesterday for school bus drivers and the sheriff was there to talk to us about school safety and bus driver responsibility. All these school shootings are causing a great deal of nervousness and concern. Here we have the tendency to say it will never happen to us but I am sure that is what the Amish school said also, as well as the others who had the problem. Scary, very scary indeed.

I also found out about a new law in Idaho (which other states have) that states a driver must slow down and proceed with caution when a police officer has a car pulled over to the side of the road. I have always done this due to the common sense rule but apparently others do not. They had a film that had some very graffic accidents on it.

I said I would tell of my experience in Los Angeles when I was driving truck so here goes.

I was driving for Frito-Lay and was pulling a set of doubles. I left the Frito-Lay plant in Bakersfield about 12:30 am or so. I joined up with about 5 other trucks from various companies and we traveled together until I had to leave I-5 and proceed to I-210 which goes past Pasadena. By the time I reached the 210 it was about 2:00 am and I was the only one on the road which is surprising considering LA traffic. I was traveling along about 60 mph when I noticed a car come slowly up behind me.

As I watched him from my mirrors he pulled up along my trailers and a guy leaned out of the car window and started to beat his fists on my trailer and screaming to high heaven. I thought, "Oh boy, I have a live one today." I continued driving and he continued beating and screaming. Of course my attention was riveted on him and what he was doing but finally I turned my head to look down the road ahead of me to make sure all was well. As I turned my head back to see what he was doing I found myself staring eyeball to eyeball with him through my window. He had literally crawled out of his car window and onto my fuel tanks while going 60 mph.

Well, I was not going to stop and of course there was no other traffic on the road to signal for help. Because I would not stop he proceeded to pull my airlines from the truck to the trailers. This, of course made it so I had to stop due to loss of air. I was not about to roll down my window so he took the air line and began beating on the glass while screaming at the top of his voice. I didn't want a broken window and glass flying in at me so I rolled the window down to see what was his problem.

He came right through that window and was laying on my steering wheel screaming all the time. I was quite strong back then and I grabbed his hands so he couldn't do any damage to me. He couldn't have moved if he wanted to considering the hold I had on him.

You have many people tell you this is what they would have done and I should have done this or that. Let me tell you when the situation occurs your instincts tell you what to do. All I could keep thinking was calm him down and get him out of the truck. I had not locked the passenger side door and his buddy came through that door at me as well. They both kept screaming, "You hit us, you hit us." Well I knew that was not possible and told them so. After a few minutes of listening to their screams I finally got them calmed down so I could talk to them.

A few minutes after that I got them out of the truck and onto the ground but they were still highly agitated. Once I got them to where they would talk to me I told them that if I had hit them they needed to show me the damage. Suddenly there was no damage to show. Okay, then my trailers would show some damage. No damage anywhere. After about 30 minutes I convinced them that if they had a beef they needed to contact Frito-Lay and tell their story. Finally they left and I proceeded on my way.

All this time this was happening I was not scared. I just kept thinking, calm them down, calm them down. However, to this day if a car comes up behind me and seems to be acting a little wierd I get extremely nervous. If I have a car pull along side of me and just stay there rather than pass me like he should I really get nervous.

Of course I had no radio to call for help, no cars on that freeway which is so strange, no police anywhere. You never know what is going to happen from one minute to the next. Those guys had to have been on drugs to act the way they were. I feel very fortunate that I was not injured or even killed especially when dealing with a suspected drug situation. I just hope I never encounter a situation like that again.

So that is my story for today. My next blog I will tell of my one and only wreck in a truck.

Have a nice day everyone.