"The Older I Get, the Faster I Wuz..."
Back in the day when 'Smokey and the Bandit' was in first-run theatrical release, Fuzzbuster (cheap) and Escort (expensive) radar detectors were still pretty new stuff. Lots of drivers had them and also the CB radios needed for talking about all the 'Bears' and 'Countie-mounties'. The era's quaint cat-and-mouse games between speeders and authorities were lots of fun, and occasionally could even be epic -- hard as that is to believe today. Motorcycle 'Track days' and racecourse-based performance riding schools did not exist yet.
The universally disliked 55 mile-per-hour energy-saving speed limit helped encourage widespread scofflaw behavior and civil disobedience. Supposedly fast riders would boast: "I never get tickets" and go on to describe in detail their combined stealth-riding tactics, methods, road-wisdom and technology countermeasures. A few even used highly illegal radar jammers.
Name: Joe Pasquarello
Photo Location: Outside Anchorage, AK
Photo Credit: Mike Nothom
Story Behind Photo: Photo taken while I whizzed by our chase vehicle just prior to receiving a Performance Award from the local Sheriff. When asked why I was so far ahead of the group (of Harley riders) I exclaimed: "They're chasing me, they're chasing me!" He chuckled and wrote me up anyway...nice guy though.
One time on a road trip to Bike Week in Florida I had a pretty fancy one of those jammers. Never could quite figure out how effective it was at jamming, but it sure was fun to play with other speeding dudes driving radar detector-equipped muscle cars. They'd fly by and get about 100 yards ahead and you'd flip the jammer on and their detector would like up like a Christmas tree and they'd nail the brakes really hard (which was tactically correct). A minute or two later you'd be half a mile or more ahead again and they'd take their Camaro (or whatever) back up to flank speed and blast right by. After they'd gone a little ways farther you'd hit them again with the jammer and the brake lights would pop back on and the entire scenario would repeat as I tried to keep from laughing. Once or twice I even got a puff of tire smoke from the outlaw dude's tires as the car tipped forward into its brakes a little too aggressively. Despite the great amusement of this game, I put this sociopathic toy away after that trip. Permanently. It was just too mean.
To all those moto-speeders who liked to boast they were so skillful they could ride really fast most of the time, yet never get tickets... Well yeah, sure. After riding with a fair number of these boastful narcissists I eventually concluded their stories were largely BS, and formulated a private theory: If you think you are riding fast a lot but are not getting tickets once in a while, then you are not really riding all that fast. The only way to be sure you are riding illegally fast frequently and for longer distances is if you are getting tickets occasionally. Really fast riders all get tickets. They are unavoidable.
Confirmation of this came one day at the old Jan Cutler - Steve Losofsky Reno BMW store. I was there once only, passing through on my way from somewhere to somewhere else. Jan and Steve were among the hardest-core originals when it came to long distance illegal high speed riding and their shop was a Mecca for many like-minded riders. It featured a wall where hundreds of fast riders had pinned up their tickets, or copies of them. This display was a thing of beauty. A shrine. I stood before and marveled. And today I wonder if anyone back then was smart enough to take a high-res photo of it? No phone-cameras existed so this would have required 35mm film inside a dedicated camera. If anyone has one (?) let me know and maybe we'll make and sell a poster-sized print. It was that inspiring.
The only certain way to know you are a too-fast rider is if you are getting enough tickets to be worried about losing your license on points. I'm not there (anymore), and most riders today don't care very much about such outlaw horoics, but even now almost every speeding ticket has memorable story potential. Here's one...
About twenty years ago, when the Aerostich company was about ten or twelve years along, I was riding a little too fast on some rural two lane road around southern Ohio. Or some nearby state. Heading back from Bike Week maybe. I've forgotten all these specifics but still clearly remember the exact roadside location, scene and situation.
The cop had pulled me over and asked for and received my license and registration and had gone back to his patrol car to write me up while I sat there on my bike forlorn but also a little confused. He'd sure been looking at me and my bike funny while talking about my speeding as I was getting my wallet out. All law-enforcement firm and gruff, but there was also something slightly odd about his manner. I could not quite put my finger on it.
He comes back with my ticket, hands it to me and I sign it. Then he says, brightly: "Isn't that one of those new Aerostich suits?" Our innovative riding suits were then getting a lot of coverage in most of the motorcycle magazines. Oh crap I thought, now stone-faced. This hick county cop was a rider! Aaagh! I'd missed it completely while he was talking with me after the stop. Post-signature and now we had a nice conversation (through my slightly gritted teeth) about his riding and the Aerostich suits. At the end I still had the stupid ticket. &%#*?!!! If only I'd been able to somehow figure out he was another rider BEFORE he'd gone back to the patrol car to write out that ticket. It could have been a warning instead. Except he was too professional and I missed it. Without that cop's Aerostich suit interest this ticket incident would be completely forgotten by now, just like so many other long-forgotten tickets from back in the days. One of too many.
Now let me tell you about another one. A "100+ mph" big ticket received on the side of California's 1-5 when folllowing at-a-good-distance some guy absolutely flying along, driving a late-model BMW 7 series car...and about one from the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police aka 'Mounties') twenty miles south of Sudbury...and about the roadside warning received only fifteen miles from home on I-35 after deliberately (and very slowly -- only 1.0 mph) passing a MN Highway Patrol car which for some reason had been holding everyone else up at exactly 55.0 mph for the previous seventy miles...and about...and about...and...
Back in February I had wrapped up the paper work on a new to me bike and was headed home from the dealer on some back roads. The bike was still in the “break-in” period, so I was varying the engine speed by accelerating up to 80 or so and then slowing back down to the speed limit (65 mph). While doing the acceleration up to 80 or so, a state patrol went by in the other lane headed the other direction. I knew he had me fair and square by the look on his face as he passed.
I slowed down and kept going until he was turned around and behind me with lights going.
After being pulled over, and he asked me if I knew how fast I was going,I gave him the song and dance about the bike being new and how I was trying to follow procedure by varying the engine speed and was only paying attention to the engine speed, not the vehicles actual speed.
He checked the bike out along with my freshly printed bill of sale from the dealer and let me off with a warning, but alas, I had left my proof of insurance at home, so he did issue a ticket for failure to provide financial responsibility.
I had been trying to bring up my email from the insurance company with the PDF file, but being on the back roads data was spotty and by the time I had the PDF downloaded he had already written the ticket.
All was well in the end.
Coming out of LaFarge, WI after a breakfast of fried Bluegills and being the last one on my bike, I was hurrying to catch up with Mike and Carl who were headed to a place I wasn’t familiar with. Coming over a rise I encountered a sheriff’s patrol car coming from the other direction. I pulled into a farm drive, took off my helmet and waited. The officer got out and asked, in a friendly manner, how was my morning? I replyed that breakfast had been great but this was kind of a bummer. He told me that I’d been doing 70 in a 55 and I told him that I had lost sight of my friends and was trining to catch up. He said that he was a rider and knew how much fun Wisconsin’s SW roads were.
He took my liscense and told me that if I hadn’t had any tickets in the last year I’d just get a verbal warning. He returned to his patrol car and I was left trying to remember when my last ticket might have been. He returned my liscense, told me to ride safely and he hoped that he’d still be riding his bike when he was my age. I was so relieved to have not gotten a ticket that it was several miles down the road before I began to wonder if I’d been insulted or not. I have been riding for over 50 years and was only 75. Why wouldn’t I still be riding? My friends, by the way, were waiting at a crossroad that they’d hightailed it to after seeing the lights go on.
Couple years ago while returning to Missouri from Sturgis and Deadwood, S.D., we got stopped on a almost deserted 2-lane in Western Nebraska. The Trooper had to bump his siren a couple times. I heard something behind me, and saw the lights on his car were lit up we pulled to the side right then. As he walked up to us he asked, “did you not hear me the first time”? My girlfriend had her music up and just said “ZZTOP was up loud”, and didn’t hear or see him. I asked him where he was hiding to clock us. He said just down a side road and the guys in the airplane above us did the clocking. I told him using an airplane ain’t fair !! Our polite responses and demeanor got us off with a warning ticket. How fast were we goin’? All of about 75, on a posted 65, deserted 2-lane road.
I was headed north on I94 in Minnesota traveling from North Carolina to my lake home. Within 100 miles of my destination and anxious to get there my speed was gradually inching upward. As I approached an overpass at 90mph there was a trooper standing next a cruiser with a hand held radar gun. I did not have a chance to slow significantly and offered a friendly wave to him which he politely returned. Much relieved and to my surprise, there was no pursuit.
May 2007 I was riding from my home in rural Nevada (near Lake Tahoe) to Fort Bragg, North Carolina to attend the annual 82nd Airborne Division All American Week with fellow vets and active paratroopers. First day out my trusty ’94 BMW R1100RS would propel me to Moab, UT on US 50 and 191 with only one incident of note…
Roughly 10 miles from Salina, UT I very slowly crept up on a car driven by a woman. Since Salina was a planned gas/toilet/cold drink stop I figured to just follow her into town. What developed was she was one of those that continuously speeds up and slows down. The limit was 65mph and she would gradually slow to less than 60 for a time then slowly speed up to over 70 for a time. The paint in the middle was double yellow so I was resigned to just suffer her speed fluctuations.
Then, maybe 4-6 miles from Salina a long, eastbound, passing lane appeared. At that point she was going 65+ so I continued to follow. Then she began to slow again. I was following with about an 8 second distance. I decided I had had enough and vented the throttle bodies to put her behind me.
My passing technique on open highway is to minimize exposures. That means I like to get it done quickly and then put a good gap on the moving object now in my mirrors. Problem is she speeded up big time during my manuver and the end of the passing lane was evident. Now commited I clicked down to 4th and put the trottle to stops long enough to peak at 93mph indicated.
As I completed the pass and gap manuver a looming rise concealed a westbound Utah StateTrooper. I was throttling down when he lit me up.I pulled over and stopped before he was able to complete a U-turn.
Long story short I gave him my lenghty excuse about the woman. He said “yeah but 87mph? I decided to not try to explain the wisdom of my minimal exposer passing technique that has served me well for my entire life
.
While I was digging out my documents he asked and I told him I was headed to a big annual paratrooper reunion at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He must have noticed the 82nd Airborne Division and 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment decals below my license plate on the mud guard.
When he came back from his rig with the 8″ x 11” ticket (he had a printer in his vehicle) he told me,”Here is what I can do, I’m citing you for 82mph in a 65. This will squeak you into Utah’s lowest fine for speeding which is $82.
I rode away somwhat gratefull but completely at a lost for the irony. Fined $82 for 82mph in a 65 on the way to the 82nd Airborne Divison. “You can’t make this stuff up!”
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