Traffic Jam and the compulsory wedgie

[richard]

Today I rode up to Kings Canyon on my 71 XS650. It's about an hour of uphill climb on a winding road and the guy I was riding with was riding a Harley Road King. When we got to the gate there was a line of parked cars going uphill to the gate about 1/4 of a mile long. We pulled to the line and seeing how long it was I told my friend, "There is no way I can sit idling in this line for that long, the bike will burn up". He said well what do you want to do? and I said well we can either turn back , or we will have to go around the cars on the shoulder. He looked puzzled. Then I said, well let's just ride up there along the edge and see what happens, and then I told him "watch for cars people do crazy things in situations like this". So I started riding up the right hand shoulder and one car honked. Then of course a guy in a pickup tried to cut me off forcing me to ride off the shoulder into the soft dirt where I stopped. I looked at the drive of the tuck and said , It's an air cooled bike what do you want me to do, let it burn up? He didn't say anything, so I back up the bike back on to the shoulder and continued toward the gate. As a got within five cars lengths of the gate a couple in a white car waved to get my attention and made a space for us to get back in the line. It was more or less flat next to the gate so I shut the engine off and pushed the bike the rest of the way up to the gate where we paid and then continued the trip.

A little background: In California we have huge traffic jams that at times they could go on for ten miles, so with that in mind there is a law that says if you are on an air cooled motorcycle it is permissible to ride between the cars providing that there is room and that you can do it safely. The problem is not everyone agrees with that law, and if you do decide to ride along side or between cars in a jam, you do so at greater risk that someone will cut you off.

Funny how some people understand and others will try to force you off the road. All in all it worked out pretty well and we had a great trip the rest of the day.

[headcase]

The impatience of people these days is pretty bad. I can understand messing with ijjits that blow past a line of cars just to jam themselves into it as far up as possible, tailgaters etc, but it seems most people just don't consider other drivers. Of any type of vehicle. Semi trucks used to annoy me occasionally, especially on the freeway....until I ended up driving one for a year or so. Huge turnaround for me, I have nothing but respect for the people who do that job. Except the ijjits, of course, and those are pretty rare with semi's. Bikes weren't too bad to deal with because I've had dirt bombers since I was a kid so I learned to respect them and the damage that can happen. But the street bikes were never annoying, just didn't catch my attention like they should have. Until I had one of my own. Now I see 10 times the idiocy out there than I ever did in a 4 wheeler or truck. People usually don't completely understand, or pay attention like they should until they become whatever they were ignoring before. Sadly that's about the only thing that'll wake someone up other than a nasty accident. "Oh...I get it now". Too late. I now know why a good friend's dad used to carry a pile of pennies in his Triumph tank bag

[richard]

I have always had air cooled bikes. I wonder if water cooled motorcycles don't have that problem in trafic?