Wups!

I did promise to post about our misadventures on the way home from Chicago, didn't I? And then instead, I got into the car and drove there instead!

The ride home was long but uneventful until we passed Kingston and were approaching the 416. We came up on a column of three trailers in a row in the right-hand lane, while we were cruising along in the left lane. We made it even with the third trailer's cab and Kari was remarking on the fact that he had a disco ball in his cab (so we were visible to him at this point), when he suddenly decided to speed up and pass the two trailers in front of him. I honked and slammed on the brakes - on the 401, mind you... And flashed him once he had gotten in front of me to say, "look, jerk, I was occupying that space you just helped yourself to..."

We passed the two trailers he had passed, and this time when we came even with his cab, he turned on his driver's side rear spotlight and quickly veered into us, trying to force us off the road. I slammed on the brakes again to avoid him and asked Kari to call 911. This guy obviously wasn't planning on letting us pass him. And you may say I was a jerk for flashing my brights at him, and I very well may have been, but this guy was trying to physically force us off the highway which would at the very least have seriously injured us.

So now we're on the phone with the Ontario Provincial Police and this guy is still not letting us pass him, but lets a few other cars go by. So we!re staying behind him, keeping low. He decides to pass a slowpoke in front of him, so we figure this might be our chance and pull out behind him. The SECOND he saw us pull out, he jerked back into the right lane. I was too scared to pass, and there was traffic coming up behind us on the left, so I pulled back in behind him on the right.

At this point, we had no idea what to expect, but we certainly didn't expect him to come to a complete stop in front of us... Then he slowly pulled half off the road, still not leaving us enough room to pass - and we're still on the phone with OPP. We were afraid at this point that he was going to get out of the cab, and all the traffic behind us was pulling around into the left lane, leaving us nowhere to go. The OPP lady basically told us that if we had an opening at all, to get out of there, and fortunately, we were able to fairly quickly.

There may have been some slight speeding as we made for the rest stop 40 km away, but I wanted to make sure he wouldn't catch up. Not sure what he did after pulling off the road, but we sat in the parking lot of the rest stop for a good 15 minutes until he passed by, and then we went inside to calm down. Kari had to drive the rest of the way home (which wasn't too far, since we stopped at Mallorytown). It was, by far, the most hair-raising experience I've ever had on the highway.

So moral of the story is, if you see a trailer from Jessy Transport being pulled by a rig that has blue LEDs and a disco ball inside the cab, don't piss him off!!!