Ten or fifteen minutes out of Myrtleford on the way back from WSBK there was a loud noise behind me, and I looked in my mirrors and there was a gaily coloured VicPol highway patrol car. Not that I mean to infer that there\u2019s anything wrong with gay. I would never do that.<\/p>\n
I looked at the speedo, and it said 100, give or take, which was the speed limit in kilometres per hour; and I pulled over and took my helmet off.<\/p>\n
The cop asked for my licence. \u201cWhy do you want my licence?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I am a member of the Victorian Police Force and I have asked you for your licence, so you are obliged to show me your licence\u201d, he explained.<\/p>\n
It was starting to sound like a religion, so I didn\u2019t expect a lot of sense. He was wearing a microphone. He told me everything I did was being recorded. He gave my licence to the other cop, who sat in the car and communed with electronic devices.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou must have been hammering when you came up behind me then\u201d, I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell\u201d, I said, \u201cit\u2019s pretty flat here, and I reckon I can see five hundred metres. Look up the road behind me as far as you can. That\u2019s about five hundred metres, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
He said he guessed it was.<\/p>\n
\u201cI figure\u201d, I said, \u201cthat I look in my mirrors every ten or fifteen seconds. Let\u2019s call it fifteen to save argument. So one look, and my mirrors are clear, then I hear the siren and you are twenty metres behind me, so you\u2019ve come 480 metres in say, fifteen seconds.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s 32 metres a second, which is, um, 1920 metres a minute, which is about 15 kilometres an hour over the speed limit.\u00a0 That\u2019s AVERAGE speed, so your peak speed would have been way higher.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless\u201d, I added, \u201dI look in my mirror every ten instead of fifteen seconds, in which case your average speed would have been around four hundred and eighty\u00a0divided by ten, that\u2019s forty eight metres a second, times sixty makes it twenty eight eighty metres a minute, times sixty makes it well over a hundred and seventy kilometres an hour. Average. You should have had your lights and sirens on. According to ads on the TV in the motel last night, every five over is a killer.\u201d<\/p>\n
I figured I was still being recorded. He looked at me as if he didn\u2019t want to discuss how many people he\u2019d killed. At least fourteen in the last ten minutes or so, if the formula in the TV ad was accurate. I was okay with him not wanting to discuss this, because I am a sensitive guy, and I know that the Victorian cops kill a lot of people, and I can understand the psychological pain it must cause. He went back to the other cop in the car. She gave him my licence.<\/p>\n
He came back and passed my licence to me. \u201cAlles in Ordnung ist” <\/em>he said.\u00a0 “Es steht Ihnen frei zu gehen<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Just kidding. He said \u201cEverything is fine. You are free to go.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The cop asked for my licence. \u201cWhy do you want my licence?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":13555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13554"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13557,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13554\/revisions\/13557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}