Jon vs. The Law

In the last post I accused Jon of conscientiously obeying traffic laws. Perhaps he does, now that he's pushing 50. But I remember a time in southern California when he not only flouted traffic laws, but boasted about it to the police.

We were on the last day of our West Coast ride, riding from Newport Beach to San Diego. A long day, but doable after a month on the road. In fact, we were without our packs because of a little interruption that involved Jon being sliced open and taken to the hospital. My parents came and got us and our packs, but left our bikes locked up at the hospital. So on this last day, we were driven back to the hospital for our bikes, and we set off.

Parenthetically, I still remember how much harder the bikes were to ride without their packs. I think we expected to be able to average 25 mph, so we rode fast fast fast, much faster than we would have tried to do with 50 lbs of panniers on the back. As a result, we burned out fairly early on the ride.

Also parenthetically, that day involved riding across Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base. That was an interesting experience.

Anyway, there we were, humming along south of L.A. when we got to a red light that we didn't like. So we ran it. Blatantly, willfully, defiantly.

When the police car pulled us over, we had this conversation:

"Where you boys coming from?"
"Seattle." Did he believe us? Without packs? But we must have looked pretty road seasoned by then, so perhaps he did buy it.
"Did you run red lights the whole way?"
And this is where Jon's charm and honesty shone through: "Yes, when there was no one coming."

I could have killed him.

Sometimes honesty is the best policy. The answer seemed to stump the policeman. He was briefly silent, and finally said, "Well, you'd better not do it around here any more."

And away we went.