I'm driving south on 217, in a van with a trailer, and I hear a bad noise in the undercarriage, and my steering and brakes aren't behaving properly. I pull off to the shoulder as quickly as I can, trying not to run into the cars in front of me.

I get out to check it out, and a cop car pulls up on the left side of the freeway. The cop gets out and starts asking me questions, and I'm nervous because I'm feeling a little bit drunk. He swabs my hands and the steering wheel with something, and when I ask what for, he says it's checking for gasoline fumes, indicating a gas tank whose nozzle is just under the step below the driver's door. I'm suspicious that he's actually checking for alcohol, but he doesn't seem to find anything.

I go around to the right side of the van, and I can see that both the wheels on that side are missing. I tell the cop that my wheels fell off, and I'm going to go back along the road to look for them, partially just to get away from the scene and get as much time as I can to sober up. As I walk back to the north, it's very dark, and I can't see whether there are any loose wheels on the side of the road, so I go back to my van. I have a flashlight on my key ring, and my key is in the ignition, the van running. I think the cop is doing something with the van that requires keeping it running, so I detach the flashlight from the key ring, trying to be agile so that I don't seem drunk, and explaining to the cop what I'm doing.

Then I get a ride with these guys who are going that way, which I think should help me search more efficiently than on foot. They are driving pretty quickly, and I ask them, are we just backing up the wrong way along the freeway? Apparently so.

We're already well past where the wheels could have been, so I want to turn around, but they say no, they have to go all the way up to somewhere in Washington, and then come back. I want to get back to my van, but on the other hand, I wouldn't mind some distance from the cop while I have more time to get sober. The guys in the van say sort of the same, they have been smoking pot and are super high, so they don't want to go back there until they have a chance to come down.