Ride faster? Tell the cops.
Listen up, you chuckleheads who are telling me to stop riding like a girl:
I'll ride faster if you can get cops out of the revenue-generation and rider-harassment games.
Last year a riding buddy and I got busted for doing 67 mph on a long, flat, straight, deserted four-lane highway in rural VA. The backward-ass county we were crossing got $120 fine of my money, and I got four points on my license. I'd use a radar-detector, but the Capital of the Confederacy in its Stalinist wisdom has made them illegal to use in VA.
A month ago I was riding through a battlefield park around Richmond. Out of habit, I parked on the sidewalk beside the closed-for-the-season Visitor's Center. Out of nowhere, in this deserted park, comes a park ranger, who, instead of telling me to move the bike or writing me a parking ticket, charges me with "Travel off of Designated Roads." Min penalty? You guessed it: $120 fine and four points on my license. Max penalty: 3 months in jail.
I'm escaping VA in a couple of months, but this sort of crap happens everywhere. If you can make it disappear, I'll stop trying to fix my mirrors.