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Speaking to some other walker, can fluctuate between "Good Morning" To "That's far enough" left hand up in the universal stop sign.
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Good point. My wife and I were driving back from Illinois to Arizona a few years ago and stopped for the night in Oklahoma City and we checked into a hotel that had more than the usual foot traffic outside. We had a rental car that had been upgraded to a new Infinity G35. I noticed a lot of interest in the car.
We got checked in and everything seemed ok and decided to drive a couple of blocks away to a Cracker Barrel for dinner.
After dinner, we started to walk back to the car and I saw this guy coming toward me. He did not seem threatening at all but I was watching him closely.
I unlocked the car and told my wife to just be quiet and get in the car and don't start a conversation with this guy. The guy says he really likes my ball cap. I usually wear one that has the name of the ship I served on. I thank him and I am moving to the car door. I can tell this fellow is not done with the conversation. The guy is smaller than I am and he started telling me that he was in town to do an air conditioning repair on a home and the deal fell through and his truck broke down and he needed a few bucks to get back to wherever he was from.
I told him I was sorry but did not have any spare change and I never stopped moving for the car door. I got in, started up and went back to the hotel.
I talked to the desk clerk about what happened and she told me the hotel was very close to a bus depot and there were a lot of people who would make the rounds of the hotels and restaurants in the area looking for money to buy a ticket back home.
That is what accounted for all the people milling about on the parking lot of this hotel.
What I learned from this encounter is to be more careful picking a place to spend the night and it would have been a better decision to not leave the gun in the hotel.
While the guy did not directly threaten me, it COULD have turned out a lot worse.
As it was, no harm. . .no foul. It is also true that while I was aware of what was around me, I was NOT really prepared for what could have occurred had the guy been armed and been bent on robbery.
In this case, I learned a lot for little cost. Things don't always turn out that way.