"Big Dave" Richards didn't drink and drive. But Big Dave did pull 32 hour shifts behind the wheel of his rig. Usually, coffee and pills was enough to make the haul from beef packing plants in Texas, game meat from northern Alaska and bison from western Colorado.
Today, however, clearly wasn't his day. His 48 foot, 130,000 pound trailer was lying heartbreakingly on its side clear across Route 70, cutting off the eastern route leading into Denver. Dave, a short but quite heavy man in his 40's, was OK. He was on the phone to his wife. After that he was going to call his boss, his insurance company, and then find a nearby hotel, where he would sleep for 14 hours. When he woke up, he would find he was out of a job.
Among the 2,134 cars stuck in the traffic jam behind his overturned truck were a dozen Homeland Security Vehicles and some very irritated anti-terrorism teams. Among them, an incensed Captain Margraves. As he melted down inside his Humvee like a nuclear reactor, the driver began to sing The Beatles' "Sergeant Peppers" silently to himself.