It was an ordinary Sunday with the motorcycle club, but today would be different. I always enjoy the conversations that I get to have with the guys in the bike club. Actually, there is one girl in the group that I am aware of anyway, but she didn’t come today. We had really nice weather. There were a lot of police out, but I didn’t think anything of it. It was just a normal ride. I had some issues with my GoPro, so I wasn’t able to get all of the footage from the ride. At one of our rest stops, I was talking with a guy named John. John has an adventure 1200cc Triumph bike. He was telling me that I might want to look into getting a regular exhaust muffler for my bike because I could get ticketed for not having the original muffler on the bike. I said okay.
Traffic Stop
It wasn’t long after that that we were pulled over. I think by that time there may have been 10 of us. It was my first traffic stop but according to the guys in the group it was really long. Surprisingly, we walked away from it with only one guy getting a ticket for a registration issue, and 4 of us getting warnings for illegal equipment. There were 3 officers. I sort of followed everyone else’s lead and stood off to the side waiting for them to let us go. Then, one of the officers said, whose bike is this. I knew it was my turn to come forward.
The tone of everything changed when I answered him in Cantonese. I think he was really surprised and he asked me to talk to one of our group members, Dave, to explain something to him so I said okay. Both Dave and I were at fault for having illegal brake handles, of course we had no idea they were illegal. By the time we were done, the officer encourage me 3 times to get some protective clothing and to take care. I actually have GoPro footage of the event, but he asked me not to post to YouTube and I said okay, so I am not showing the video here. After the ride I shared with the group how the officer said I needed to get some protection. I told them that I wanted a motorcycle jacket but that I had not been able to find a suitable used one. The 3 guys from the group offered me jackets and two guys offered me riding gloves. I was really surprised.
