EPT
A couple of friends of mine decided to organize some barbecue/party in celebration of the start of the vacation. Just a standard 5PM-5AM gathering with 20ish friends in a guy's backyard.
The prospect of a barbecue didn't particularly excite me, who became vegetarian 2 days earlier due to a bet. I did, however, really look forward to getting drunk and stoned again after about 2 months of exams and doing barely anything social.
Apparently, a lot of my friends felt the same thing, and as we gathered all the booze (it was BYOB) we realized we had a clear abundance in volume. Due to circumstances, I arrived by car rather than bike. FML. After weighing my options, I decided to just drink away and either force myself to puke or wait till I sobered up before I'd drive home. The drive would only take like 20 minutes total anyway, most of it in remote areas where there would surely be no car around 5AM on a Monday night.
Flash forward to ~2AM. A couple of people had left already. The remaining 14ish were mostly drunk or stoned. Among those who combined: me. I totaled 12 beers, 4 glasses of champagne, 4 shared joints and one glass of wodka - fanta lime. I realized I'd have to slow things down a bit if I wanted to prevent a car crash on the way home. I decided I wouldn't drink more than 4 beers over the next 2 hours, but didn't really put a limit on the smoking. I'm pretty confident in my stoned driving.
3:45 AM. Some drama unfolded and killed the party atmosphere. Me, my gf and a friend of mine that I was giving a ride decide to head home a bit earlier. I wasn't completely sober yet, mostly stoned. I was certain I could drive without too much trouble though, especially on that pretty simple road between our respective homes.
+ Show Spoiler [A small overview of our road that night] +
Driving towards my friend's house, we encounter this very local super thick layer of fog. It was impossible to see through. Even still a bit drunk, and really stoned, I don't forget to turn my fog lights on. I enter my friend's street and drop him off. I see a car coming up behind me. I drop my friend off and I do a U-Turn at the end of the street to go home and face the approaching car. My gf: "Fuck it's the cops". The driving cop stares me down. I pretend I don't notice. I keep an eye on my rear mirror after we cross.
The cop car does a U-Turn as well. FUCK. There was quite some distance between both of our cars. I'd say about 150 meters after they U-Turned. I drove exactly at the speed limit, so they wouldn't catch me speeding and so they wouldn't gain ground on me either unless they crossed the speed limit. I also took a turn-filled detour hoping they'd lose me between turns because of the distance between us.
A look at the detour I made hoping they'd lose us. Note that the Bankstraat and Ziptstraat are even parallel, so I made an insane amount of unnecessary turns
They weren't stupid though, unfortunately. The distance between our two cars kept growing closer and closer. I also lost all hope that it was a mere coincidence that they were doing our exact route. I smelled defeat.
Just a car's length was between me and those 2 cops. I focused all my energy on driving without a single mistake, even clearly looking for crossing bikers at 4AM in the morning. After about 300 meters of being on my tail, they activated their siren.
My gf's face spelled panic. I told her to relax. The weed was talking. Cops walk to both sides of the car, I lower my window.
Male cop: Good evening, sir. Do you realize your fog lights are on in a non foggy area?
RELIEF
Me: Oh I had no idea. Let me take care of that.
Male cop: Can I see your license, registration, insurance and technical checkup documents?
Me: Yeah sure.
My girlfriend opens the glove compartment. The female cop was at the right side pointing her flashlight at it while holding her pistol holster. 10 CD's drop out on to the ground. Still pretty fucking stoned, trying to contain my laughter was a real challenge. I had this semi-burst of laughter followed by this twitchy awkward smile on my face. Unfortunately I didn't have the guts to face the cops to check their reaction.
We find all the papers, except for the technical checkup documents. My gf keeps anxiously looking for them, but I give her a little non-verbal hint to stop. I thought, if the cops feel like they already 'caught' someone, they'd feel productive and wouldn't look for another "crime". I was happy it was missing.
Male cop: I'll leave the fog lights incident at that. You'll have to show your technical checkup documents at the police station within 14 days though.
Me: No problem.
Woot.
Male cop: If you don't mind, my colleague will do a breath analysis test now.
Female cop: Did you drink tonight?
Me: I had about 2 beers early in the afternoon.
I thought it'd be smart to play the innocent card, especially with my innocent looking girlfriend in the car with me.
Female cop: Then you should have nothing to worry about. We cops aren't nazis anymore these days.
She laughed. I laughed a bit to keep the awkwardness away.
While she explained how the breath analysis thingy worked, some jokes were exchanged. Most were well received, some led to a bit of awkwardness.
I took 3 deep breaths, in and out, before exhaling through a white plastic attached to a device.
Female cop: Just look at the result with me here..
She turns the device towards me, revealing a screen with 'Analyse..' on it, meaning it was still analyzing. After a tense moment the screen spelled a capital S. My puzzled look must have revealed I wasn't so certain about the outcome. That I had a few more beers than two.
Female cop: That's the S for Safe.
Holy fuck.. What the hell.. I didn't even hope of getting that..
Me: Oh, of course it is.
Female cop: Have a good night.
Me: You too.
I still have no idea how I could have passed. Or how they didn't notice my burning red eyes or my general stoned behavior. I guess I got really lucky somehow. All my friends from the party have no reasonable explanation for it either.
Guess I'll give you a quick update of the other things that have been going on with me.
I finally got my good computer from Leuven to my home, so I can play SC again. I can stream again too, although with a shitload of top players streaming now I don't really see the use.
I got a question on my Information Law exam about Google Streetview, and the privacy law issues that would arise if they ever did it in Belgium. In my answer I explained why it would be legally impossible to implement this in a practical way due to our pretty strict privacy laws.
Then, today, when walking around in Leuven, this car with a Google logo and 8 camera's mounted on the roof of it drives through the street. How hard can a wrong answer slap you in the face?
I got my grades, they're ok. I still have to redo 5 courses during the summer though. Ugh.
Hope you enjoyed the read,
RaGe
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