SilverBuffalo
Jan 1st, 2006, 5:07 pm
This happened on a weekday a couple of days before Christmas.
Its been pretty nice down here in Florida so my wife and I decided to take a couple hundred mile day trip.
There’s been a lot of traffic associated with the holidays so we got out of St. Petersburg, across the skyway bridge into central Florida.
For those of you that aren't familiar with the territory, once you get away from the coast you’re pretty much out in rural flat and wide open cow pastures. The roads are straight 2-lane and not a lot of traffic.
It was a nice warm sunny day of about 70 and we were both relaxed and enjoying the ride for the next hour or so.
(I put this line in here just so you Northern guys can envy us)
Speed limit was 65 when we caught up to a flat bed truck hauling a load of some kind off plastic pipe about 8-10" in diameter, he was running about 50 mph,
there were 2 pickup trucks behind the flat bed waiting to pass,
I stayed back and waited my turn, when oncoming traffic cleared the first truck passed and I was waiting for the second one to go,
after a minute or two I realized he wasn't going to.
There was no more traffic so I pulled into the other lane, waited for a couple of seconds to make sure the pickup would see me, when I saw him look in the mirror I started to leisurely accelerate past him, something the LT is very good at.
Just about the time I got even with the front of the pickup
(who was about 2-3 car lengths behind the flatbed)
one of them 10-15ft long pieces of plastic pipe that were stacked up and chained on that flatbed started to slide of the truck,
I saw it hit the ground in front of the pickup and not knowing what he was going to do or how many more where about to come loose or where that pipe was going I damn near twisted the throttle grip of the LT and flew past the flatbed.
As I passed the cab I laid on the horn and motioned for him to look back, apparently he did, because he and the pickup pulled over.
Whew......... that was close!
Its been pretty nice down here in Florida so my wife and I decided to take a couple hundred mile day trip.
There’s been a lot of traffic associated with the holidays so we got out of St. Petersburg, across the skyway bridge into central Florida.
For those of you that aren't familiar with the territory, once you get away from the coast you’re pretty much out in rural flat and wide open cow pastures. The roads are straight 2-lane and not a lot of traffic.
It was a nice warm sunny day of about 70 and we were both relaxed and enjoying the ride for the next hour or so.
(I put this line in here just so you Northern guys can envy us)
Speed limit was 65 when we caught up to a flat bed truck hauling a load of some kind off plastic pipe about 8-10" in diameter, he was running about 50 mph,
there were 2 pickup trucks behind the flat bed waiting to pass,
I stayed back and waited my turn, when oncoming traffic cleared the first truck passed and I was waiting for the second one to go,
after a minute or two I realized he wasn't going to.
There was no more traffic so I pulled into the other lane, waited for a couple of seconds to make sure the pickup would see me, when I saw him look in the mirror I started to leisurely accelerate past him, something the LT is very good at.
Just about the time I got even with the front of the pickup
(who was about 2-3 car lengths behind the flatbed)
one of them 10-15ft long pieces of plastic pipe that were stacked up and chained on that flatbed started to slide of the truck,
I saw it hit the ground in front of the pickup and not knowing what he was going to do or how many more where about to come loose or where that pipe was going I damn near twisted the throttle grip of the LT and flew past the flatbed.
As I passed the cab I laid on the horn and motioned for him to look back, apparently he did, because he and the pickup pulled over.
Whew......... that was close!