[Jeff Higgins]

Still kinda chuckling about this. Maybe I should take it more seriously but, honestly, my only reaction was at first a somewhat stunned disbelief, followed by genuine amusement.

There were four of us in my Land Cruiser, myself along with my two sons and one of their buddies. We were northbound on the freeway, heading out of town in moderate traffic, driving in the center of three lanes (with an additional HOV lane to the left, making four). Just going with the flow, nothing unusual. Still dark out.

Then "that guy" appears in my rear view, going like a bat outa hell, weaving across all lanes. I first notice him a couple hundred yards behind me. So, maintaining heading and altitude, I'm just carrying on, knowing he'll be past and gone in a flash. Except, well, that's not what he did.

I was slowly passing the car to my right, pretty even with it, and just barely catching the guy to my left. About half a car length behind him, me gaining. He wasn't "doing his part" as a left lane traveller, going slower than the traffic to his right. So, lo and behold, "that guy" was now boxed in, trying to pass me on the left (where he should be), only to get held up by the fast lane slowpoke.

So he dives in behind me, noticing I was going a bit faster. How he didn't hit me still escapes me. Inches... Now he is behind me, so close I can barely even see his windshield behind my tailgate. So, without slowing, I tapped the brake pedal with my left foot, just to flash the brake lights. "Get off my ass..."

Well, that apparently set him off. Next thing I know, he's passing on the right shoulder. Comes back across the right hand lane and into the center lane in front of me, and brake checks me. He's in some little Nissan Sentra schitt box, I'm in a fully loaded (in more ways than one - I'll get to that later) Land Cruiser. I still don't know how I didn't hit him. So now he is doing the "slow creep", 40 mph in 60-65 mph traffic. So I did the right thing and... turned the high beams on. And he brake checked me again. This time, I saw a gap and went around him on the left, then all the way over to the HOV lane, suspecting I might wind up being forced to pull over if this guy either hit me or tried to run me off the road.

Next thing I know (I'm back up to 65 now), he comes barreling up on my right, leans out his window and - throws his Vente decaff soy free-range ethically harvested latte' at my windshield. Major props - he centers the passenger side, causing my son to instinctively duck - "WTF was that???!!!" Hell of an arm on this guy. Or maybe lots of practice...

He took one more low pass at us before departing, half out his window yelling profanities. We were driving in a light rain, so it took all of a mile for his $8.00 Starbucks to rinse off. The four of us just sat there in silence. For a minute, anyway.

Then one of my sons said, somewhat whimsically, "he had no idea..." You see, the four of us were on our way to spend a day at our shooting spot, in a gravel pit. We had enough firepower on board to invade a Third World country.

Good thing that paper cup wasn't a brick or something. I'd be typing out a whole different story, and it wouldn't be here on this forum.