Hi,
I would have come to the rally, wanted to go up there tonight actually, unfortunatly I have heaps of crap I have to do on Saturday (all the stuff I have been putting off so I can ride for the last month since I got the bike)
Actually last weekend I rode to Kaikora on Saturday but I followed the signs and took the inland road, might be worth the ride to check out the Leader rd
Incedently I had an interesting experience on that ride, started out heading to Kiapoi at about 4pm once I got to Culverden I had lunch and felt good so I decided to head on to Kaikora.
It got dark while I stopped under the bridge in the photo to stretch my legs. The end of inland road is a series of straights with small, easy bends in between and goes for kays and kays, I was doing between 120 and 130 the whole way
, reeling in a car whos taillights started appearing at the far end of each straight.
After about 15 minutes straight slowly getting closer to this car (by this time its completly dark) I finally notice this is a marked police car(he was obviously speeding too, still about 150m away - gotta love those reflective stickers) and chop the throttle till I'm doing about 90 but the cop must have been watching my speed because he immediatly dropped to a bit under the speed I was doing and for the next about 2 kays he was slowing down maintaining a slower speed than me to force me to close the gap untill he was doing about 60 on a straight piece of open rd and we were the only 2 cars on that rd (I wasn't going to overtake him, I thought he was trying to get behind me to pull me over. I was also worried about him noticing I was on a 250 and pulling me over for no L plates)
Then, all of a sudden, he pulls over at the entrance to the tightest corner I had seen in atleast 20km - I figured he was letting me past to pull me over. I slowly rode past him, through the corner, back up to 100km/h and checked for disco lights in the mirror. I didn't even see his car, so, one more corner and I opened it up as fast as I could (road got twisty again at that point)
I don't understand it, judging by the way he adjusted his speed so quickly when I backed off, he had to have known how fast I was going so why wasn't I booked for speeding (on easter) and if he didn't pull over at the end to let me past to pull me over, why else would a cop pull over at the very end of a huge series of straights in the middle of nowhere.
He had to be doing a u-turn patrolling an area that would certainly profitable in the way of speeding fines (long straights, mild corners and far enough from the main route that you would feel safe from the police, also I stopped again for 15 minutes further up the roadand he didn't show)
So if he was patrolling the area why wouldn't he have booked me?
He could have been looking for something or someone - but even so, I would expect the driver took note that there was a vehicle behind with one headlight (I always notice anything with one headlight - Because if its a car with a headlight out, I need to know which one to figure out where exactly the car is) and it would only take 1 more look to realise I was going faster than him (who as I said, was almost definatly speeding himself)
There is always the theory that he had already reached his quota and decided to just drive around and relax for a while
Bookmarks