Excessive speed for the freeway

Since I start­ed my new job in Palo Alto, I’ve been rid­ing back, rather than by 280 or the hat­ed 101, by Page Mill Road up to Sky­line. It’s a great, fun ride. Page Mill is chal­leng­ing­ly twisty and not a very smooth road so I have to be a lit­tle cau­tious. Sky­line is smooth and even and about as nice as a two-lane road can be for a fast, relaxed pace. Well, right about the time I got to Sky­line, I found that my shifter no longer worked. I pulled over and sure enough, anoth­er link­age nut had vibrat­ed off. I’m pret­ty sure that the last time I replaced this one I used a lock­nut, so next time I’ll try grad­u­at­ing to nylocks.

I have a lot of range with my motor, so I just left the darn thing in third until I could stop at at store. Start­ing in third from a stop takes a bit of finesse with the clutch, but it’s doable. The rev lim­iter kicks in at about 110mph in third, so it’s a work­able gear sans shifter. A zip­tie pro­vid­ed a tem­po­rary fix, so off I went. It was already dark at that point, so I just took 280 the rest of the way.

Well, 280 is wide and smooth, espe­cial­ly right there north of Edge­wood Road where I think it’s five lanes in either direc­tion and beau­ti­ful views. I was just think­ing to myself how strange it was to be going 105mph and not even be over­tak­ing oth­er traf­fic when I noticed the red and blue flash­ing lights in my mirrors.

Ehhh, yeah. So I got pulled over while I was exceed­ing the speed lim­it by a good 40mph. I fig­ured, «Hey, 35 years old, 18 years on the road — I guess it’s about time for my first mov­ing violation.»

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, the offi­cer who pulled me over seemed to most­ly want to talk about my bike. He liked the Moto Guzzi. He has a Harley, but from the sound of it his wife pres­sured him to get the Harley and he liked his old Shad­ow bet­ter. We had a real nice chat and he remind­ed me that there’s a spe­cial sec­tion of the traf­fic code for vio­la­tors over 100mph, includ­ing auto­mat­ic 30-day sus­pen­sion of license and a $1300 fine.

«I only hand those out to peo­ple who give me a hard time,» he said, «not nice guys like you.» He remind­ed me how unsafe it was to be rid­ing fast near dusk due to the risk of deer strike, hand­ed me my license, and sent me on my way with­out a ticket.

I’m avoid­ing using any phras­es like «dodged a bul­let» because, well, it was noth­ing that I did. I did­n’t «talk my way out» of a tick­et. I just treat­ed the guy with hon­esty and respect. I did­n’t deny that I was going fast (although I avoid­ed men­tion­ing any spe­cif­ic num­ber when he asked me) and I did­n’t try to weasel out in any way. But yeah, I’m pret­ty lucky.