Susan and I have been running our consulting business about nine months now. The incubation symbolism is not lost on us -- we appear to have successfully brought this entrepreneurial child into the world. Since we haven't suffered financial ruin and been reduced to eating Ramen (more than is desired) in that initial period of uncertainty, we decided it would be a good time to do some strategic planning. Ours is a business without a mission statement, goals, objectives, or any of the other trappings of modern enterprise. Had we written a mission statement in the early days, it might have said something like "We believe that starting our own business will get us out of the hell of office life, and that's good enough for us." Now that things are humming along, we've sensed it's time to put our heads together and really think about why we're doing this and how to convey our mission to the world. It's really nothing more than naming the child -- it doesn't change the baby in any way, just gives you a more convenient way to conceptualize it.

We decided that the best place to do our strategic planning was beside a swimming pool somewhere outside of town. We've both been through Strategic Planning in our old nonprofit alma-mater, and have no desire to relive the excruciating drone of that process. Our planning would be like our business: partly professional and otherwise subject to our whims. So we closed the office on a Thursday and headed toward the beach.

Humans have a fine appreciation of three dimensions. Three of our senses (sight, hearing, and touch) have the capacity to richly chart three-dimensional space for us. In the forth dimension, time, our perceptions are sadly limited. Basically, we can only perceive a single point, a passing instant which cannot be reexamined. It's as if our eyes could only see a single nerve ending's worth of visual information at one given moment. If, in addition to an eye test, we took time-perception tests to get our drivers' licenses (and this would greatly reduce the number of accidents), we would fail miserably. This is a good thing, because the place where I now write was once covered by a vast, tropical sea. If I possessed wide peripheral time-vision, I would be distracted by the ghostly forms of now-extinct trilobites and early bony-fishes undulating past my desk.

This sea has receded in the intervening millennia, but along its shores are cliffs that bear the fossilized remains of ancient life. Calvert Country, Maryland has cliffs so stuffed with fossils that the calcified remains of long-dead aquatic creatures spill out on to the beaches by the bushel. We've spent some pleasant hours combing the bases of the seaside cliffs for 10 million-year-old barnacles, shells, and sharks' teeth. We decided to go back to Calvert County for our strategic planning. There might have been some elaborate metaphor in this -- about past, present, and future -- but I wasn't privy to it.

We left town around one, trundling down Pennsylvania Avenue within spitting distance of the capitol building. There are weird moments in Washington DC, when the street suddenly dumps you out facing some monstrous governmental edifice that you're used to seeing on television. One moment you're in some leaf-lined brownstone street and then -- bam! -- you're on the set of the NBC nightly news or All the President's Men. You'll be dodging mad taxis and when you look up, there's the capitol of this powerful nation. In winter I've gone ice skating in Pershing Park, only about a block from the White House. We park on the Ellipse and then walk past the fence at the south entrance of the White House on our way there. The fucking White House, and I'm strolling past it like it's a just a nice restaurant where I'll never be able to afford to eat. Washington can be truly surreal.

Just as we left the District, I heard police sirens behind us, and pulled over to the curb. A dark blue car blew past us and through the intersection ahead, with at least three police cars screaming behind it. There was a roar that sucked the air from the world and then a helicopter flew overhead, staying above and just behind the lead car. This was a real-live car chase.

Outside the DC line, the road opened up into a tree-lined parkway. We pulled back into traffic, somewhat stunned by this rapidly-vanishing apparition. Almost as soon as the last set of police lights passed over the next hill, sirens yelped behind us again, and more police cars came barreling past the stopped traffic in pursuit. We watched the helicopter over the trees as it turned right and passed out of our view. We guessed that the fleeing car had turned off Pennsylvania or stopped somewhere ahead.

At the next intersection, more police cars and motorcycles went by us. "Someone's going to get killed," we were telling each other, expecting at every hilltop to see the scene of an accident ahead. More flashing lights appeared in the rear view mirror, and I obligingly heeled the car to the shoulder yet again. They were coming up extremely fast; drivers around me scuttled to either side of the road. Before I could even stop completely, the same blue car we'd seen before flew by us again at amazing speed, with a long line of cops now trailing behind. Somehow, the fleeing driver had turned off the road and then pulled back on it behind us. The helicopter again roared over the car.

After another group of police cars and motorcycles had gone wailing past us, we tentatively pulled back on the road again. Another driver who had pulled into the median just sat there, perhaps feeling too rattled to drive. We were also a little skittish, expecting at any moment to see more pursuing lights behind us, or a horrific crash ahead. We watched the helicopter over the trees ahead in case it telegraphed what might be happening up there.

Sure enough, the helicopter began to wheel around and come towards us. "He's coming back," I said and the flashing red and blue lights appeared like fireworks on the next hill ahead. We hit the shoulder again as the blue car went by in the opposite direction. He weaved down the road at a frightening pace as cars scattered frantically out of his path. A veritable parade of high-speed police vehicles was now dogging him. The line of pursuing cars flashed by, and people again began to pull their vehicles back on the road. Things were now feeling pretty insane.

We were discussing how this was the second major crime we'd stumbled on in the last two weeks when I saw the helicopter wheel and turn in the rear view mirror. The guy was coming back again. I pulled the car on to the shoulder and drove along the side of the road up to the next intersection, where we quickly turned off and fled. The road behind us was increasingly feeling like a demolition derby. By now we were both constantly scanning the road for signs of blue car or his police pursuers. We flipped through the radio dial for some news of what the hell was going on, but found nothing relevant. After only a couple miles, the road where we'd taken shelter rejoined the original parkway. We passed a fender-bender between two cars that had been trying to get out of the way of the chase. The car was apparently running back in the opposite direction again. We fled onward.

The next morning, we came down for continental breakfast in our cheap hotel and found a copy of the Washington Post. We fell upon it eagerly, scanning for an explanation of what had been happening on Pennsylvania Avenue the day before. There was nothing. Apparently in the District this doesn't even rate as newsworthy crime.

There was nothing to do but sit down by the pool and begin our strategic planning.