The other day while at work I received an urgent request for volunteers. I glanced at the email, and realized that I definitely had the skills to be of assistance. And so did a few of my friends.
So the next day, a cop showed up at the door step and escorted Bridget, Lisa, Jason, and me to the sheriff station. We walked into the training class, and then glanced across the room to find about 10 to 15 alcohol bottles on the table. Yep, we were volunteering for a wet lab. Basically, cops were training their officers on possible DUI pullovers. So, to do my civic duty, we had to drink.
The night started off with first with a double jack and coke. And we began to mingle a bit with the other people in the room. Well… then we realized the bar was pretty stacked, and the jack suddenly turned into a shot of patron, which turned into goldschlager, and then finally I asked for some blue label scotch, and was pleasantly surprised with some.
On our first round of BAC tests, Bridget and I both blew a .053. I felt pretty good about this since I felt as if I’d wait awhile before driving home if I was at the bar. Well after a few more drinks, we were ready to start the tests: Bridget blew a .09 and I had a .114.
We we’re directed outside and suddenly I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of a running car with the keys. (I had to think to myself, “Was this a setup?”) And so the real fun began. The trainee cop came up to me, asked a few questions… “Why’d you blow past that stop sign? Have you been drinking tonight?” After giving some really good excuses, I then had to get out of the car to go through the sobriety testing.
The first test is the most important. Following the finger from left to right will absolutely tell whether or not you have been drinking. I tracked the finger without a problem (or so I thought), but apparently my eyes were a bit bouncy which is an easy way to tell if someone has been drinking.
The second test was to walk the imaginary line. I figured I’d test how sober I was by counting in Spanish, and then backwards in Spanish. I thought I did pretty good with this, but the cop thought “no bueno.”
The last test was raising one foot off the ground for an extended period. Each time I was able to keep it off the ground for at least 20 seconds.
I went through the testing process with four different cops, and my stats weren’t good. I would have gotten arrested all four times. The scary thing is that the last round (I hadn’t been drinking for probably 90 minutes), I felt as if I sober. I passed all tests (except for that damn eye test) easily with flying colors.
When I got back inside, I blew a .13, .02 higher than when I thought I was drunk. I think by coming down off my peak, I felt much better than I did and mistaked this for being sober. It’s a good lesson to learn. (Freezing outside also didn’t help.)
Bridget on the other hand was sober. She blew a .075 and was ready to keep partying. Or not. And then the cops escorted us back home. It was a lot of fun and educational. The cops were really nice. And Qdoba was absolutely delicious the next day.
UPDATE: I found the YouTube video that we watched with the cops, while we were getting our drink on. Kinda funny.