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Central Coast & Bay Area Tour: October 2004 Day 1 Continued....

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In fact, the last two times I�ve ridden this road with other riders, during the 2001 Sport-Touring.net California Meet and the same event in August of 2004, we rode our motorcycles down this road like we stole them! This time around I decided to stop for some pictures and be nice to the locals and tourists alike.

Still, we attacked the twisty sections but kept our speeds reasonable on the long straights�tough as that was! I�ve discussed at length what it was like to ride this section of PCH in my other trips. So, I�ll skip over that in this report to avoid sounding redundant.

Left: Jackie does her best to pose alongside her 2003 Anniversary Edition Suzuki Hayabusa. In the hands of this woman, the Hayabusa is a missile that covers distance quickly. Just don't tell that to the California Highway Patrol!

Ironically, just as we were behaving ourselves on the road, it was also the time we got caught with our pants down! I was leading the group through Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. We entered a long straightaway and I saw the telltale markings of a CHP patrol vehicle approaching in the opposite direction: it was a Chevrolet Trailblazer with a white roof and small lights on top! I throttled back to slow down even though we really weren�t going that fast.. These sneaky CHP vehicles now patrol our highways with radar mounted in front and back of their vehicles so they can pinpoint a suspect�s speed coming and going! Damn I hate the way the CHP enforced speeds. This is one thing I really do NOT like about riding in the US�the way speed is demonized and used as a revenue generating source. So I spotted the CHP and slowed down to maybe an indicated 75 mph, yet the blue & red lights went on anyways. FUCK! Our actual speed must have been 65 mph so why the hell was this CHP lighting us up? We passed the CHP vehicle and I figured we were going to get a speeding ticket after the CHP got a chance to turn around and pull us all over. That�s when Jackie went by me on her Hayabusa, speeding away into the next turn. I thought, where was she going? The CHP whipped a U-turn and sped by us, not bothering to pull us over and instead going after Jackie. Well, there wasn�t much we could do. I decided to pull over on a scenic turnoff to take some pretty pictures, while we pondered our next move. After about 10 minutes of this, Ken, Carl, and me got back on PCH and a few miles later passed the CHP who lighted us up earlier, going the opposite direction. Of course, we were at the speed limit! Further down the road, we saw Jackie on the shoulder just putting her paperwork away. We all knew what happened. Quite frankly, I had visions of her being handcuffed and sitting in the back of that Trailblazer for running. Thank goodness all she got was a ticket for crossing the double-yellow line, which she did when she passed me trying to get away from the CHP!

Right: The coastline along Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park.

We stopped here to take some scenic photos and wait for Jackie. Notice the continued blue skies.
We were thinking it was going to be like that all the way to San Francisco.

I really do NOT like the California Highway Patrol. If Jackie hadn�t run, we were sure to have gotten a speeding ticket for doing 65 on a 55. I mean c�mon! Is that really fast? There was nobody around, the road was clear and straight, and nobodys life was in danger! WTF would that ticket have accomplished? Teach us a lesson or make us hate the CHP? It just so happened that Jackie made a bad decision and she paid the price. Otherwise, we would probably have gotten speeding citations for doing something so trivial. Carl said it best. It�s sad that the only �bad� thing out there that we had to look out for was the CHP!