My new hot rod...

Last shift my partner and I moved into a new station built to cover the north end of the city. We were busy all night and got little sleep. After our reliefs showed up we both slept for a few hours at the station before heading home. My partner left, and I stayed behind to get some administrative responsibilites taken care of. Another employee of the company was there doing some finishing touches on the paint job. After I finished up my work I told him I would see him later and packed up my truck to leave.

I got in the driver seat and turned the key. To my amazement, what had been a quiet running engine just the day before now sounded like a hot-rod. The first thought that ran through my head was "what kind of piece of trash truck did I buy?" (I have only had the truck for about 3 weeks). I popped the hood and looked at the engine. Nothing seemed out of place. I walked around the truck thinking the whole time that the noise it was making sounded similar to the sound my Camry made when the muffler went. I noted that the exhaust pipe was still there and didn't look damaged, so I walked to the side of the truck and dropped to the pavement to look underneath the car.

As my eyes adjusted to the light I found that a huge piece of the pipe that connects the catalytic converter and the muffler was missing. My first thought was..."how could I miss that falling off?" Then I noticed the nuts and bolts that had been holding it to the frame of the truck lying on the parking lot.

Yup...my catalytic converter and part of the connecting pipe was gone, jacked, stolen.

As I drove to the repair shop I smiled thinking about the story I would have to tell a police officer if I got pulled over for making too much noise...

"Um, yes officer, I know it sounds like I had a muffler job done, but you see, $400 worth of parts was just stolen off my vehicle and I'm on my way to get it fixed now."

Never a dull moment working in the City of Champions.