Tourist Prop

One fine day when working for my last agency, I was told that I had to ride into San Francisco to attend the AAA insurance company's DMV update. So who am I to pass up a nice ride into the city. It just so happened that Juan "eets no probleem" Jalisco was designated from his agency (the future agency I'd be working for) to attend this same meeting.

Of course we took off in plenty of time to take our time to get there. I guess this tends to lend some credibility to "motor training" being considered as an "OWOT" (Organized Waste Of Time), just a smidgen of credibility.

So Juan and I sat through the presentation, asked some questions, took some pamphlets to take back to our respective agencies. You'd think most people after leaving a meeting either head home if its the end of the day or to go back to work if its not..... right?..... yeah right, what ever......

Juan and I decided to extend our OWOT by riding around the city, we justified this as "tandem riding with allied agencies training". And of course it had to be organized as we had to decide our route through the city. You can't visit San Francisco without riding down Lombard Street and needless to say we felt the same way.

It was pretty funny, because a lot of the other motor cops which were at the earlier meeting were also at Lombard St. So Juan and I did our "tandem riding training" down the steep and windy street. Once to the bottom we parked our motors along the street. One of the motor officers from a south bay agency asked if I would take a picture of he and his partner as the did their "training" riding down tandem.

Of course I would and did. I made my ascent and hiked about half way up Lombard St and let me tell you, those motor boots ain't made for running, or walking up steep hills. So I snapped a few pictures as they rode by and made my decent back to where my motor was parked safe and sound because Juan was parked next to it.

I hand the motor officer his camera and they ride off having concluded their OWOT. I get down to the bottom of the street and I see a line of tourists besides my motor and a tourist SITTING on my motor. Us motor cops are very protective of our bikes. We could be involved in a traffic collision and the first thing we'd check on would be the condition of our motor, never mind that compound fracture of the arm or leg.

Juan stood their smugly as he was having his picture taken with a very cute Italian tourist, the punk. He justified the photo prop as "They all asked before they sat on it."

Well I was able to get back on my motor as I told the remaining tourists that Juan and I were on a break and needed to get back to the movie set for the film we were extras in.... hey it worked and I got my motor back.

Juan to this day won't tell me how much he made for letting tourists sit on my motor.

Well after all of that hard work, Juan and I rode down to Fisherman's Wharf. We decided to have lunch at Alioto's restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf. We parked our motors, not that its a hard thing to do with them being police motors.

We walked up to the restaurant entrance just as Mrs. Alioto was exiting. She saw the shoulder patch on my uniform shirt and asked what I was doing so far away from home as she lived in that small city. I told her we had attended some training here in San Francisco.

She asked who was watching the small city if I was all the way out here. I politely told her that I locked the gate before I left. She had a good laugh and told the restaurant general manager that lunch was on her. That was a very nice gesture of Mrs. Alioto.

Lunch was fantastic!