{"id":35,"date":"2004-05-07T21:47:33","date_gmt":"2004-05-08T04:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=35"},"modified":"2007-10-28T22:34:40","modified_gmt":"2007-10-29T05:34:40","slug":"how-fast-do-you-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=35","title":{"rendered":"How Fast Do You<\/em> Ride?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I ride my motorcycle on the freeway I monitor my speed with GPS and try to stay at the limit or at the most 5 mph over. Where I live – Arizona – that’s how fast most people drive. If I lived somewhere like Southern California, where freeway traffic runs 10 to 20 over, I guess I’d go that fast too. You really need to go with the flow, especially these days when 18-wheelers and Greyhounds roll as fast as the cagers. You can’t afford to get rear-ended when you’re on a bike, no matter how big and heavy it is.<\/p>\n

Once, on a deserted 2-lane highway between Sonoita and Tombstone, with a posted 65 mph limit, I got up to 105 trying to catch up with a pack of friends. The instant I saw a car coming over the crest of a hill toward me I throttled back to idle, but as we passed I was still rolling pretty fast, decelerating through 90. I didn’t slow down because I thought the oncoming car might be a cop, I slowed down because I was going way too fast, and now, with a car coming at me in the other lane, my situation was a little more unsafe than it was when I had the entire road to myself, as I had a moment earlier.<\/p>\n

But it was<\/em> a cop! In an unmarked car! And guess what? Instead of whipping a U-turn and running me down the patrolman just flashed his lights and blipped his siren as we passed, then kept right on going.<\/p>\n

At that exact moment, my only thought was IT’S A COP<\/em>! About a second later reflection set in. First, I was amazed I hadn’t dropped dead of a heart attack right there in the saddle. Second, I was amazed that my buddies up ahead hadn’t backed off even a notch when they passed the same patrolman – they were going 85 or so. Had I seen a brake light or two up ahead, I’d have had a clue there was a cop coming, and I wouldn’t have merely backed off the throttle, I’d have hit the brakes and gotten back down to 65 like right then.<\/p>\n

I was a lucky guy that day! Haven’t sped . . . well, grossly sped . . . since then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I ride my motorcycle on the freeway I monitor my speed with GPS and try to stay at the limit or at the most 5 mph over. Where I live – Arizona – that’s how fast most people drive. If I lived somewhere like Southern California, where freeway traffic runs 10 to 20 over, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motorcycling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}