The Ride Report

I went for a ride this afternoon along the coast with one of my club brothers and it turned into a LEO kind of day. Everywhere we turned we ran across cops, until finally we couldn’t turn anymore.

Our first encounter took place as we were riding through Camarillo on the way to Pacific Coast Highway. We’d been poking along behind a pair of slower cars boxing us in until they turned off, then we got on the gas a little bit and made some noise. Next thing I know, I look in my mirror and there’s a Highway Patrol unit pacing us in the right hand lane. I don’t know where the hell he came from, but he was there, and we were riding like he wasn’t. Oops. And then to compound the oops, my registration tags are expired. Double oops.

We proceeded to ride like citizens for the next couple of miles, and that cop held his position at my 4 o’clock in the next lane the whole way. Even at stoplights, he’d stop short and sit back there with a good view of my plates. I thought for sure he was going to pull us over, but eventually he turned right where we turned left and everyone went their separate ways. Go figure.

We opened it up again and hauled ass the rest of the way to PCH, and about a mile up the coast we came upon another CHP unit parked on the road up ahead with his lights flashing. As we pulled up he stepped out in front of us and waved us down. I half-wondered if the other car had radioed ahead and he was there for us, but I figured it more likely he was closing the road down due to the fires we’ve been having out here lately. Instead, it turns out he was stopping traffic for a BMW commercial shooting just up the road and he’d let us go through in five minutes or so.

We put our kickstands down there in the roadway next to his car and proceeded to bullshit with the officer for awhile. He was pretty cool and didn’t have the anti-biker attitude a lot of cops have and we cracked a few jokes and shared a few laughs with him. But the main thing we were doing was trying to keep him entertained to keep him from going behind us, seeing my expired tags, and maybe giving the ticket we’d dodged a few miles back.

A few minutes later our efforts were wasted when a Sheriffs unit pulled up and parked next to us. The CHP walked over and started talking to the deputy, and now I had not one but two cops on the verge of looking at my license plate. Then a minute later another Sheriff unit pulled up to our left and now we had a law enforcement party going on all around us.

At that point I figured it was inevitable that someone was eventually going to notice my tags, so I decided to just roll with it and have fun and document the situation, so I jumped off my bike and took a picture of the scene.

In the end, none of them noticed my tags, or if they did they let it go. I feel like I dodged not one, not two, not three, but four bullets today. Plan for tomorrow? DMV first to get new tags, then … Vegas, baby! I’m on a roll!