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[Richard230]

Well that sucks. Terry. While the CHP motor officers are pretty cool, those other cops from local city jurisdictions, and especially the San Mateo Sheriff's office, can be uninformed jerks.  Best of luck today, but I bet you get pulled over for sure for carrying Charger on your bike.  I am looking forward to seeing you and Charger today and hearing more about your interaction with the police - who (in CA, at least), I might add, get paid a lot more than you might think, especially when you include all of the benefits and a very generous retirement plan that lets them retire when they reach 50 years of age with typically 90% of their highest salary for the rest of their lives.

[Killroy]

Sorry to hear that Terry.

[Electric Terry]

I'll meet you again on another day Richard.  There's 100% chance at least 1 of the departments will pull me over, and there's a 99% chance the cop who does is an idiot.  So it means I'm signing myself up to waste a day going to San Mateo county court to have to appear in person to get another ticket dropped.  I would just try to out run them if they try to pull me over, but I know they will be at all ends of Skyline drive so I don't think that's a good idea.  But recently outrunning them is the only thing that works really well.  Trying to pull over and reason with them doesn't work well.  I've learned that you can't deal with these people and you just have to do what you have to do.  Many on this forum might not think outrunning cops is a good idea, but I promise you if you've been through what I have you'd realize that outrunning them is the only thing you can do to protect yourself.  Even when they are wrong, once you pull over, make no mistake, they are in control.  You can not just leave at that point.  Even after you have clearly shown them their reason for initiating a stop was invalid.   

I have missed important meetings and events because I am at the mercy of some cop who feels he can hold me as long as he wants while he tries to fabricate something.  I've learned just don't put yourself in that situation.  Don't pull over.  As soon as you see them coming, accelerate fast and get the hell away from him, just do so in a manner that isn't blatent that he is aware you saw him.  That's the only thing you can do.  So far it works pretty well.  No tickets in the past few months, usually I evade a cop who is turning around to follow me every few days when I travel.  It happened almost daily when I was in Los Angeles helping my friend Brandon Miller for a month.  That's a lot of tickets that I've avoided, although I shouldn't have gotten any of them anyway.   When I think about what I've been forced to do I realize our whole police system is just a little bit on the silly side the power they have being as poorly trained as many of them are, and they fact they carry a gun.  I'm surprised more innocent people aren't shot from these idiots as their reasoning and decision making skills surely doesn't warrant their position from my experience.

[Shadow]

#BarkRidesMatter

[Richard230]

OK Terry.  See you and Charger on September 10th.   

[Electric Terry]

#BarkRidesMatter

Lol, I should make this as a bumper sticker and put it on my Givi case.

Sorry I got a little heated in my last post because this is incredibly frustrating for me.  I met the guys at Zero this morning.  Jackson, Kate, Brody and Bagel and really wanted to ride with them.  I rode to highway 9 with them and then turned around, extremely upset that I can not find a simple solution to this problem.

http://articles.latimes.com/1996-02-22/local/me-38569_1_ride-dogs-motorcycle

If anyone has any suggestion on how to comply with each officer by pulling over, but quickly stating that it is not illegal and I must be going now and keeping the stop to under 30 seconds each time it happens let me know.  I would never encourage anyone to out run the cops, but in my situation its the best way so far to deal with it and works quite well.  Especially with the SR size 6, 660 amp controller its almost effortless to make the red and blue lights tiny specs in the mirrors quite quickly, and finally disappear.  But I don't like I'm forced to do this.   

Any suggestions? 

Surely I'm not the only person in the US who rides with a dog on a motorcycle.  I wonder how others deal with the constant harassment? 

[Richard230]

Well, it looked pretty quiet today (LEO-wise).  I only saw one cop handing out a ticket to a sportbike rider.  I have no idea why.  Perhaps his license plate was installed at the wrong angle? A CHP sergeant was watching the 35/84 intersection but apparently didn't observe anything worth his attention.  Plenty of H-D's saving a lot of lives with their straight pipes, but that didn't seem to interest anyone carrying a ticket book.  Shortly after we got a seat at Alice's the last two cops retired to parts unknown and were not seen again before we left.  Perhaps the squad of quiet electric motorcycle riders scared them off.     All in all a nice day for a lunch at Alice's.  Too bad I forgot to bring my camera to memorialize the moment.   

[togo]

That was a blast. A dozen people showed up, mostly Zeros but two Energica too. Did learn that the direct ride up Page Mill Road does exist, and that it's quite a climb (and triggers the overheat light on my SR) and that the people who make the Zero's batteries are local and have some amazing battery testing equipment that can drain or charge a battery to or from the grid at rates of hundreds of kilowatts. The Energica were cool if a bit out of the price range for my style (commuter frankenbike). Wish I'd remembered to take pictures. 

[clockfort]

Picture of our Energica guerrilla-marketing party crashing friends at the Palo Alto meetup start. The employees and bikes both were pretty cool, though 

[oobflyer]

Wow Terry - it seems that the cops in your area have nothing better to do. Where I live they are too busy with drive-by shootings to bother with traffic enforcement  ;-)
I did notice a few cops on yesterday's ride, but I didn't know about this 'STEP' thing until after the ride.

[oobflyer]

Here are a couple of short video clips from yesterday's ride for those not on Facebook:

[Richard230]

Here are a couple of short video clips from yesterday's ride for those not on Facebook:

Nice videos, thanks for posting.  That first one riding northbound on Skyline, just north of Page Mill, is where I like to go hiking (at Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve, at the left) during weekdays. 

[togo]

That was a blast!

Next one would be 17 September, assuming we continue the 3rd Saturday tradition.

Picture of our Energica guerrilla-marketing party crashing friends at the Palo Alto meetup start. The employees and bikes both were pretty cool, though 

It wasn't a Zero-only event, it was a Electric Motorcyclers' event!

I'm glad no fights broke out.

As Elon Musk likes to say, electric vehicles are not the competition, the competition is the internal combustion engine!

I think Zeros are the best value for the money, and the Energica fit a different niche.