leifeste pre-weekend

this last weekend i went back to brady so i could attend a family reunion. it’s not for all leifestes, but just descendents of my great-grandfather.
while driving through austin on my way to brady, i noticed i was passing a green neon — an older style, with the logo in the raised, rounded plastic that sort of looks like neon. this only had significance to me because when i met tamara back in 1997 she was driving a similar car. before we started hanging out too much, she totalled it by driving at 40mph or so into the back of a ford bronco (or some similar large vehicle). she was looking for a photo developing place and didn’t notice the vehicle in front her stopped to make a left turn. her airbag had deployed and she’d gotten some gas burns on one wrist due to her wrist watch, but other than that she was okay (that i recall). she called ash and i later and told us about it, having walked home from the hospital (a couple of miles, probably) since she no longer had a car. we were both shocked she’d do that instead of calling someone, but i had to admit i probably would have done the same thing. anyway, all that to say all of this entered my mind as i noticed it. then as i passed it, the girl driving had shoulder-length-plus dirty blonde hair. she actually looked a fair bit like tamara from back then. and she appeared to be somewhat nervous/upset and kind of freaking out about something, which also fits rather well. it was kind of odd, like there was some sort of rip in the space-time continuum and somehow i was seeing an earlier tamara that hadn’t wrecked her beloved neon.
ten or fifteen miles outside of llano, i got trapped behind a slower moving vehicle. eventually he pulled onto the shoulder to let me pass, then almost killed both of us as he whipped back into the lane right in front of me while an oncoming car was headed our way. turns out the shoulder was ending abruptly with nothing but grass and dirt ahead. i’m glad i wasn’t too interested in passing in the dark under that scenario. after later passing him, i got trapped behind two more slower cars. after miles of being stuck, i finally got around them. happy to be free, i kept it at around 80 or 85 mph (or maybe a little more…). one to two miles later, a car headed toward me flipped on his blue and red lights. he started to slow down and pull over. when the lights flipped i let off the gas, but i knew he’d already clocked me. as described earlier, there was no shoulder, so i kept driving until i hit somewhere i could pull over…about a mile or two later. having driven through hills and such, i had long ago lost sight of the cars behind him or the cop. i pulled over and waited. and waited. the slow-moving vehicles passed me. but the cop never showed. after a few minutes, i decided he wasn’t coming so i took off. i was pretty glad he didn’t show up because i was a wee bit worried about how a cop might view my having a couple of pistols and a mini mac-11 in my vehicle (should he find out). there’s nothing wrong with it, but if they’re not in a good mood or don’t like the looks of you, they can still throw their authoritarian weight around. so i still remain ticket-free since the late 90’s. (and i’m no law-abiding driver either. it’s kind of odd. i think you can get away with a lot in houston traffic most of the time.)