Wilsons Sandbox

Tom, I lived in Baltimore (yeah, I lived The Wire) and commuted to Annapolis daily for a while on my KLR.  I only got one ticket during that time and that was because I was tearing up the road next to the MD State Police barracks near the Bay Bridge every day.  They had enough one day, so a trooper was waiting for me to go by one morning and pulled me over.  I showed a FL license and still had FL plates (it's where I bought the bike while on an assignment) so he wrote me a warning and gave me a verbal warning which basically asked me to stop acting like a jackass on their roads.  I also had my bike briefly stolen in Baltimore and the City police were very courteous and as helpful as they could be.  They bike was located the next day, dumped on someone else's property.  The police sorted it out with the landowner and get permission from the landowner for the bike to remain there until I could pick it up the next day rather than going to the impound lot.  In, general, my bike-related experiences with MD law enforcement have been positive. Notwithstanding, I wouldn't shy away from filming in MD, but if pulled over I would stop recording.  Yeah, you shouldn't have to.  Then again, MD has some nice roads for motorcycling.  The roads around the Prettyboy Reservoir north of Baltimore are awesome as are most of the roads heading out west of the city around old Ellicott City and heading further out to western MD. But I understand if you want to avoid MD on principal.  If you can stomach it, I think you'd have a good time and your friend would appreciate it.Hope you trip goes well regardless. Josh. [b]From:[/b] thomas cole [b]To:[/b] DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com [b]Sent:[/b] Thu, July 29, 2010 4:13:23 AM [b]Subject:[/b] [DSN_KLR650] NKLR, I will be by-passing MD.   Lister's good evening, I'm mostly a lurker but every so often I'll post my thoughts;   1.    After reading the post(s) about the "wire taping law" in MD my jaw just dropped and I kept saying on word "WOW". I find that one of the most disturbing laws any law enforcement agency could ever hide behind. I have planned a major road trip on my A20 in two weeks down the US right coast then across the deserts to visit Arnold in CA then up to BC turn right on the # 1 across the prairies to home in the middle of Canada.   2.   I had planed to film a lot of my journey and post the RR. Now I'm certainly and completely going to avoid MD all together. I have a good buddy of mine in Baltimore and we were going to link up and cross his state together. Now I feel I'm going to let him down but now we'll meet in Pennsylvania and do the Virginia's instead. Correct me if I'm wrong folks I thought you people (Americans) believed in freedom of speech, freedom of movement, not having a police state.. etc..etc..Why aren't more people screaming bloody fowl over this?   3.   Clearly this guy on his bike speeding and weaving in traffic was at fault and should be punished accordingly but, that officer in a civilian car cutting him off and flying out of the car with a gun to his face, no badge, no uniform, screams like a ROBBER to me. I think if that happened to me I'd have pinned it, got on my blue-tooth cell phone, called the cops and drove to the nearest cop shop this is stuff from Hollywood movies for crying out loud.    So my question to the list is...are there any other states with crazy laws like this so I can by-pass those states too? From an outsider's perspective this is not a way to draw tourist to your state.   Tom A20,Lime Ricky

Looked around trying to get a picture and finally came up with this.\ http://www.motorcyclenews.com/upload/269605/images/triumph-tiger.jpg