A Life Wasted

Going Home

Late September 1999 I decided to do a little recon around where we lived. I parked the camper in a large camp ground that offered storage. I paid for a month and locked it up. I drove to the area thirty miles north of where we lived and spent a few nights camping in the woods at places where I could hide the Tahoe. On the third day I was driving up a curvy country road that followed a river when my radar detector went off. I didn't think I was speeding but I hit the brakes anyway. There was a Pennsylvania State Trooper around the curve and he'd clocked me across the bend in the river, which hardly seemed fair. I still didn't believe I'd been speeding so I drove up to where he sat and then past him. He pulled out behind me and hit his lights. I pressed the accelerator to the floor.

At first this seemed like a terrible situation since I was in an SUV and the Trooper was in a Ford Crown Victoria with a police package and he was right on my bumper. But for as large as it is, the Tahoe's not slow. Not as fast as the State Police car, but respectable none the less. At first I was surprised when I pulled away from the police car, but after taking a good look at the car I understood why. The county road we were on was smoothly paved and appeared to be a good road but it was not level. I could feel wave motion as I drove over its uneven surface, but the heavy SUV's suspension handled the movement pretty well. The police car wasn't doing so well and the Trooper was fighting to control the car at high speed. Had we been on an interstate it would have been a different matter, but here on this country road I had the advantage.

I've got to stop and give a related comment here. I think the Pennsylvania State Police figured out the same thing I did during that chase because two years later when I passed through this area they were all driving Chevy Tahoe's. Your welcome Chevrolet.

One thing I had neglected to mention is that I'd acquired a laptop and a GPS antenna and software. Dash mounted GPS receivers with maps were available then, but the maps were not as good as what was available for a laptop, so that is what I had been using. So as I pulled away from the state trooper I looked at the moving map and noticed a road coming up that looked like it was more of a secondary road than the one I was on. With the state trooper nearly a mile behind me I made the turn and was pleased to see that this road was pretty rough. I correctly assumed I could put greater distance between the trooper and myself on this road.

About this time, I remembered my scanner, which I turned on. What I heard was the guy chasing me report the turn I'd just made. Another trooper answered and said, "Perfect, he's heading right for us. We'll set up at..." then he gave the name of a road I don't remember. As this was being said I slowed for a ninety degree right turn in the road, then checked the map for the named cross road as I accelerated. By the time I figured it out the road where they were waiting for me was two miles ahead of me. The trooper behind me said he'd slowed down in hopes that I'd slow before I reached the puncture strips.

There was nowhere to turn off so I decided to try something tricky. Now that the trooper behind me could no longer see me I braked hard and pulled down the drive way of a home that didn't have a car in the drive way. It was my hope that no one was home. I drove around the house then stopped where I couldn't be seen from the road. With my window down I heard the state trooper's engine before he got there, then I heard his brakes. Before I could react he said on the radio, "A lady just came running out of her house and flagged me down. She's pointing at her house. I think our guy is in her back yard. Yea, that's what she's saying. He's parked behind her house." With that I took off headed back the way I'd come.

I expected the trooper to resume the chase but he stayed to clear the house out of concern I might have let a partner off there. I was up to speed when I heard this, and was thinking I was good until another trooper reported that he'd taken up position on the road ahead of me. For a rural area I'd run into a nest of state troopers. While processing all of this I forgot about that ninety degree turn until I was on top of it. I did all that I could to slow down enough to make the turn but it wasn't possible. I slid sideways into the turn and nearly made it but my right front tire caught the ditch hard enough to blow the tire out and break the front right axel.

I kept plowing forward fighting the wheel and driving a line in the asphalt with raw steel from the axel. My GPS showed a dead in road to my right which I couldn't see, but turned into anyway. Giving the broken Tahoe full power, the front axle dug a trench in the dirt as it went but it kept going. I really got to hand it to Chevy that was one tough truck. Knowing I couldn't push it too much further I turned it towards the woods and drove it till it stopped. At this point the trooper's from the road block had driven past where I turned into the woods and reached the trooper who'd set up in front of me. I could hear them try to puzzle out where I'd gone.

Directly in front of where I'd stopped I could see a house through the woods, perhaps half a mile ahead of me. I grabbed a couple of things off the front seat, ran towards that house and threw the stuff forward into the woods, hoping to lay a false trail in that direction. Then I grabbed my go bag, scanner, and laptop and ran in the opposite direction as fast as I could. At this point I heard the trooper cars go past my position without stopping. This gave me more time, but I knew they'd figure it out soon so I ran into the woods until I was out of breath. At that point I stopped long enough to destroy the laptop's hard drive, then quickly buried it in the soft dirt under a blue spruce tree. I got up and ran as hard as I could all the time listening to every word on that scanner.

I'd covered more ground than I'd hope to before they found the Tahoe. When they did find it I was in for another lucky break. That house which I had tried to make them think I had run towards was recognized as belonging to another state trooper, one involved in the chase but not there at the moment. He said over the radio that I was running towards trooper so-in-so's house and for everyone to converge there. For the next thirty minutes no one thought to look for me anywhere else, but I knew that would change too soon. Again, I ran for all that I was worth.

The next time I stopped I drank a quart of Gatorade. I felt pretty smug about having four quarts of Gatorade ready in my Go Bag. Most folks would have thought that four quarts of liquid would be too much to carry in a fast exit, but I knew from hard experience that immediately after a chase I would be dehydrated and in desperate need of fluids and the electrolytes that the Gatorade would provide. I kept the empty bottle to carry water in later, then took a moment to relieve myself. When I was done I sprayed two squirts of capstan based mace where I'd stopped. I didn't know if they would use tracking dogs, but if they did the capstan would throw off their ability to tack me for several hours.

Feeling better after drinking the Gatorade I kept running.