Andrew - 30 yr old Truck Driver

Your rig is humming along this oh so familiar stretch of interstate at 20 mph over the limit. You are bobtailing back home from a short haul trip and wanted to get home to see the pilot of that new show "The X-Files". Three and a half hours out, three and a half hours back. You should have made it back in plenty of time but there was some bullshit you had to deal with at the drop off and now you were running late. Your VCR was programmed to record just in case, but you'd still rather see it when it is aired. The program looked like it was going to be just your cup of tea.

You turn off your radio as they begin to play "Achy Breaky Heart" for the third fucking time in the past couple of hours. If you never heard that song again it would be too soon. You were just about to reach over to dig through your case of books on tape when you hear the CB radio crackle to life. Reaching up you turn the volume up.

Listening in you hear the chatter of various other truckers up and down the interstate talking about a huge accident up ahead. Numerous vehicles involved, fire, hazardous materials, all spanning across both East and West bound lanes...it sounded like a god damn nightmare!

"Shit!" You exclaim. So much for getting home to see your show. Hell, by the sounds of it you'd be lucky to make it home by morning. It would take HOURS to clean a mess like that up and open the highway again. Thanks to a couple of large lakes in the area this stretch of road had few alternate routes.

There was nothing for it. You either had to take the long back road route around one of the lakes or find a place to pull over and bunk in the sleeper until the road was cleared. As this was supposed to be short trip you hadn't brought anything with you except a lunch, which you had already eaten hours ago.

That is when you remember. No more than half a dozen miles ahead was a third option. Normally you would never even consider it, but these were not normal circumstances.