Rolling Stops and Righteous Fools

Funny thing about motorcycles — they attract attention like moths to a headlight. Everyone’s got an opinion, especially the ones who’ve never ridden a mile in their lives. They’re the loudest in the whole damn symphony of noise, with cops coming in a close second.

This one’s part story, part rant … actually, two stories stitched together by a single thread: people who don’t understand motorcycles but feel qualified to police those who do.

Story One: The Cop Behind the Bushes

A couple weeks ago, I was heading home from one of my Santa Fe rides, winding down after hours in the saddle. Perfect day, one of those rare rides where your brain hums quiet and your soul unclenches a little.

I hit that stretch of road with three four-way stops in a row — every local knows the one. It’s a pain in the ass. I don’t put my foot down at these stops unless there’s another car in the intersection. If it’s empty, I roll in, feel the momentum bleed off, stop cleanly, then roll out again, all while keeping my feet up on the floorboards.

As I approached the last stop, I spotted a cop tucked behind some bushes. No biggie, I thought. I wasn’t speeding. I wasn’t even awake enough to be reckless. So I did my usual, came to that perfect still-point, then eased forward.

BAM. Lights. Siren. Full-blown episode of Cops: Biker Edition.

I pulled over, got my registration out, started fumbling for the digital insurance card. The officer climbed out, predictably opening with, “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

“Nope,” I said. “I know I wasn’t speeding.”

“You ran the stop sign.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. I have it on camera.”

And there it was — the circular logic of power. He’s got the badge, I’ve got the bike, and apparently, we’re both starring in Kafka Rides Again. I told him I could feel when my bike comes to a stop, that I know it better than he knows his own pulse. He didn’t care. Suggested I could go down to the station and request the footage if I didn’t believe him.

He had me. You can’t win an argument with a self-righteous cop whose body cam doubles as judge, jury, and ego buffer.

Something about his voice threw me off, though — flat, slightly broken cadence. For a second, I thought maybe he was developmentally delayed. Surely, I told myself, they don’t let the slow ones carry guns and radar guns. Turns out, I was wrong — just in the wrong way.

As we wrapped up, he relaxed, started chatting. Noticed my pistol peeking from my vest and asked what I carried. We talked guns. Then he showed me pictures of his bikes. He was trying to be friendly, and that’s when it hit me — the weirdness in his voice was a German accent.

He confessed to being born overseas. And that’s when another thought hit: how can someone raised under another country’s laws really grasp what American freedom feels like? You can memorize it, sure, but you don’t feel it in your chest until you’ve risked something for it.

So yeah — at first I thought he was slow. Turns out he was just German.

Story Two: The Snitch at Work

Now to the other kind of cop: the workplace hall monitor.

At my job, we’ve had a rise in vehicle incidents as the workforce’s grown. Leadership, trying to look proactive, told everyone to report unsafe behavior. And boy, did they.

I rolled in one morning and my boss — a former biker himself — calls me into his office. Says someone reported me for “unsafe driving.” Apparently, while leaving work the previous day, I’d been swerving within my lane. The accuser even snapped a photo of my license plate.

I laughed. That’s unsafe?

I explained that moving within the lane isn’t reckless, it’s standard. You do it to see around cars, to avoid oil slicks and road seams, or to break in a new tire. Hell, maybe I was just having a little fun. Still legal. Still safe.

I told my boss, “The idiot who reported me was more dangerous, driving with one hand to take a picture.”

To his credit, my boss agreed. He sent a response up the chain with a link to an article about why motorcyclists move within their lanes. His boss agreed, and so did his boss’s boss. By the end of it, I had a full chain of command backing me up — and the tattletale got a little education on motorcycle dynamics.

Justice, for once, rolled on two wheels.

The Thread That Connects Them

The cop thought I didn’t stop.
The driver thought I was unsafe.
Neither one had a clue what they were looking at.

That’s the thing about riding: people who’ve never done it think they understand it better than you. They don’t feel the machine breathe underneath them. They don’t feel that instant of stillness before the roll. They don’t understand that swerving is awareness, not recklessness.

In the end, the cop let me off with a warning, and my boss had my back. Balance restored. Two tiny wins for freedom, served throttle-side up.