joshkelahan.com

So I go to turn out of my neighborhood this morning and there is a line of cars as far as I can see.  What could possibly be going on at 6:30am I wonder to myself.  Then these large truck things start coming up the hill, and as they drive by I read on the side something about Illinois tactile squad.  There was four of those followed by a whole gang-load of police cars.  I quickly turn the radio over to KMOX to see if I can find out whats going on.  After a few minutes, I was able to squeeze into traffic.  By the time I get to Illinois-157, I can’t see any police, or the trucks.  Oh well, I think to myself, and I go get on the highway.

Traffic driving into St. Louis, from Illinois is always the same, its decent until you get to the place where Interstates 64, 55, & 70 merge and they drop you from having 3 lanes on each of those highways to a combined 4 lanes in a half mile span.  So as I am coming up on the merge, there is the Toyota Corolla that flies by on the shoulder.  I think to myself, ‘buddy, there isn’t even much traffic, how much of a hurry are you in that you have to drive on the shoulder?’  Then I look in the mirror, and I see, following this guy 6 to 10 police cars, running full lights and sirens.  ‘Holy Crap,’ I think to myself, ‘I get to see a car chase on the way to work! sweet!’  Meanwhile, the dude on KMOX is still talking about the economy or housing markets or something.  Just as a little aside, I have notice through the years that KMOX, a news radio station, will generally skip the current, important to its market area listeners, and report national news, which in my opinion is rather stupid.

Anyway, the perp, zig-zags through traffic, and up onto the King Bridge.  In my opinion, this was a mistake.  The King Bridge doesn’t really go anywhere, it just dumps everyone out there by the dome.  I suppose you could use it to get onto 70, but with the amount of cars right there, in a car chase, that wouldn’t be the direction I would go.

Now I generally take the King Bridge in the morning, but I thought for a moment today I would take the poplar, but I figured with as fast as they were going, they should be over the bridge before I even got there.  So I got on the King Bridge, and before I even got to the actual bridge portion, before I even got to the gravel pit area, about 20 cop cars come over the bridge.  I must say, that if nothing else, today was a good day for a car chase, because there was so little traffic on the bridge.  It was right about now that KMOX finally got to the traffic.  The dude was going on and on about how they are re-stripping 44, and the lines are washing away becase MODOT sucks, and how the poplar is backed up, and then finally, the dude says that if you are on the King Bridge, look out, because there is a police chase going on.  That was it, that was all the coverage KMOX could provide.  WEAK!  They next went on to talk about the economy in North Bangla-pak-ubeck-astralia.

Anyway, it was an interesting drive to work, if nothing else.