ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
General Category => Electric Motorcycle Events => Topic started by: togo on August 04, 2016, 06:52:39 AM
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People coming from Santa Cruz side, meet at Zero Motorcycles in Scott's Valley. Plenty of charging for Zero customers.
People coming from East, meet at Palo Alto Baking Co. near California and Birch in Palo Alto. At least ten J1772 charging stations nearby. I'll be there early, charging up and having a pastry.
Kickstands up at 10 AM. People needing to charge, arrive in time to be charged by then. The rides should aim to arrive by 11AM to beat the lunch rush, park in a nice lineup for pictures.
One NEMA 14-50 and some 120V outlets are available for charging at Alice's.
Electric Terry and Charger should be leading the Scott's Valley contingent.
Last time we had three people signed up with 24 hours notice, left Palo Alto with five, found two more waiting at Alice's and were joined by two more and a dog soon after being seated. It was a blast.
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I'm in. From Campbell/San Jose, I can get to Alice's without charging, but I am thinking of riding to Zero to get more or a ride with other Zero's.
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I plan to be there again (assuming nothing else is going on with my life on that day). Because I live up north, I'll meet you at Alice's. :)
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Plenty of charging for Zero customers.
What are the charging options at Zero after hours?
Level 1?
Do they have Elcons powered up outside on the weekend?
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Plenty of charging for Zero customers.
What are the charging options at Zero after hours?
Level 1?
Do they have Elcons powered up outside on the weekend?
NEMA 14-50 and J1772, unrestricted. No Elcons are laying around.
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Plenty of charging for Zero customers.
What are the charging options at Zero after hours?
Level 1?
Do they have Elcons powered up outside on the weekend?
NEMA 14-50 and J1772, unrestricted. No Elcons are laying around.
What about level 1 /NEMA 5?
I don't have a power tank/ or a DigiNow or any J1772 adapters.
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Meetup is next weekend!
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Plenty of charging for Zero customers.
What are the charging options at Zero after hours?
Level 1?
Do they have Elcons powered up outside on the weekend?
NEMA 14-50 and J1772, unrestricted. No Elcons are laying around.
What about level 1 /NEMA 5?
I don't have a power tank/ or a DigiNow or any J1772 adapters.
Alice's has a 120V electrical outlet immediately behind their rear yard fence to the left of the realty office, which is located adjacent to the gas station. There is also an electrical outlet located behind the gas station, adjacent to a concrete walkway that leads between the bathrooms and the realty office parking lot. But you will need a 25-foot, or longer, extension cord to reach that without blocking the walkway while parking in the lot. (Or like I did, behind a "no parking" sign on a raised planter, next to the gas station.) ;)
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Plenty of Level 1 charging at Zero! like 20 outlets all for motorcycle parking.
There are 4 level 2 J1772's also and a few 14-50's as well
See you guys Saturday around 9-9:30 to top off at Zero and we will leave Zero around 10 AM to head to Alices.
Get there anytime to start charging at Zero. No restrictions.
Terry
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This coming Saturday! Don't miss it.
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I'm meeting at Zero HQ.
I did check out the charging situation at the HQ last week and its really good. ;D
Now I wish I had a Diginow fast charger.
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I'm coming from santa cruz so with the Diginow I can top off in about 6 minutes using the J1772's at Zero which can do 10,000 watts. I'll bring an adapter and extension to help charge other people too.
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Ill be there around 9:00, with a Jplug to zero and a handfull of 110 outlets, as well as a small booster charger (6A DC)
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Today's news. I have seen this sort of thing before. It is going to be crazy up there. The cops will be really hungry to hand out as many tickets as possible to make their safety grant worthwhile:
The California Highway Patrol and San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, with the assistance of the Burlingame, Brisbane and Foster City Police Departments, will be conducting a Saturation Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP), operation on Saturday, August 20, 2016, with focused enforcement on collision causing factors involving motorists, motorcyclist and bicyclists.
The focus of the enforcement will be in the unincorporated areas of SR35 and SR84, locally known as Kings Mountain, Sky Londa, and La Honda. The hours of this operation will be from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.
Extra officers will be on duty patrolling these areas where traffic collisions occur, in an effort to increase safety, lower deaths and injuries. Officers will be looking for violations made by drivers, motorcyclists and bicycle riders that can lead to serious injuries. Special attention will be directed towards drivers speeding, making illegal turns, failing to stop for signs and signals, passing over double lines, failing to yield to pedestrians in cross walks or any other dangerous violations. Motorcycle and automobile safety equipment violations will be enforced. Bike riders will be stopped and citations issued when they fail to follow the same traffic laws that apply to motorists.
The following safety tips can save lives and stop tragedies witnessed far too often in these areas:
Drivers should:
- Slow down.
- Watch for wild animals near the roadway.
- Not race.
- Watch for motorcycles and others.
Motorcycles should:
- Not pass illegally.
- Follow the rules of the road, SLOW DOWN, and obey signs and signals.
- Not race.
- Watch for wild animals near the roadway.
- Ride a properly maintained and equipped motorcycle.
Shared with all areas in County of San Mateo in Crime & Safety
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Today's news. I have seen this sort of thing before. It is going to be crazy up there. The cops will be really hungry to hand out as many tickets as possible to make their safety grant worthwhile:
The California Highway Patrol and San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, with the assistance of the Burlingame, Brisbane and Foster City Police Departments, will be conducting a Saturation Traffic Enforcement Program (STEP), operation on Saturday, August 20, 2016,
So this is really unfortunate to hear. It sounds like there will be 5 departments, looking to justify their efforts to their superiors so they can financially justify future STEP programs today. And although I will show up at Zero to help charge anyone, I feel I should not go because of past experiences.
Each and every time I travel through a new town I end up getting pulled over for my dog, Charger. Let me say it is not illegal to carry a dog on a motorcycle. In California alone there has been unanimous judicial verdicts allowing owners to ride with their furry friend. However it is uncommon enough that the police enforcement units are not aware of this. They see something different and they instantly start following, and before they know what law they think is being broken they initiate a stop.
I have a friend at the dog park who works in the call center for Santa Cruz PD and they said they had a meeting about me, as well as Scotts Valley and the Santa Cruz Sheriffs office and the Freedom Blvd CHP to explain to their officers that it was legal to carry a dog, not to harass me, and to explain nicely to 911 callers that are concerned about a dog on a motorcycle that it is under control and not to send police in route.
Had I known it was going to be such an issue I probably would have not gotten a dog. I am a lifelong motorcyclist and I do not drive cars. So that leaves me with a dilemma.
Here's the problem. Police officers aren't paid a lot. Those who could make more money either choose a different profession or get promoted. The ones who remain on the street are there for a reason. And for those who have had the interactions I have found that there is an ego issue, and they don't like it when they are wrong. And the problem is they have the ability to use their emotion to do whatever they want, and you are left to fight it later. If the salaries were higher there would be competition to hire good people, and those with behavior issues would be fired or not allowed to be on the street. It's hard to clean house when you are scraping the bottom of the barrel to hire anyone you can. Most rational people would not choose that job at the pay it gives as they have other options.
After hundreds of times being pulled over in the last year, I ask why I'm being pulled over, they almost always laugh and point at Charger and say "why do you think?" and I explain that I am not breaking any laws and have every right as a motorcyclist to be a man and ride with mans best friend. I have the general statute of California showing it is not illegal to carry a dog and show it to them. I then ask if I am free to go. about half the time or more they tell me no, visibly upset for being shown they are wrong. I have about 20 tickets in the past year for failure to signal, unsafe tires, improper mounted license plate, touching the double yellow, or other things I may or may not have done, but the point is the officer did not see my slightly worn tires or anything else while I was riding. He wrote that ticket or lied about what he saw me do because he was mad.
A couple months ago I'm riding with my friend Sean McLaughlin on Zero's from Scotts Valley to ChargePoint for a meeting we are on time for and we are riding the speed limit and not breaking any laws. But CHP starts following us, and slowly gets wedges himself between Sean and I in a very unsafe manner and gets himself 5 feet from my rear tire for a minute trying to make me do something wrong which I don't but yet turns his lights and siren on anyway.
I show him the papers, he doesn't like it, and he decides to just hold me while he tries to write a ticket for something. After 15 minutes Sean tells me he has to go as now he is late for the meeting too and realizes the cop is just being a serious asshole. Finally after a half hour the CHP wrote a ticket for failure to signal. And I asked when I failed to signal, and he said it was when I was pulling over on to summit road. I only did that because he was pulling me over!! These guys are just a waste of oxygen.
I've hired lawyers and they can get all these things dropped appropriately but it costs time and money. They use the motion to suppress evidence saying it was an illegal stop and my tires or license plate mounting or anything else I've been cited for should have never occurred. But the burden is on you to show the officer was incorrect over and over and over and over. If you ignore it, you get in trouble although it's not your fault.
It's a fairly sensitive issue to me and I still have outstanding tickets I have to appear for the stupidest things that would have never happened had I not had a dog with me.
I've explained this to my lawyer and after he understood the issue again and again and again, he said "in not so many words" to try to "avoid" them being able to pull you over if you can do so safely and without breaking any laws. He's basically saying try to lane split or move expediently to take random turns and park to avoid the hassle of being pulled over. Basically because he agrees there is nothing you can do once they pull you over if they are having a bad day. You can't argue with them on the spot. They will win, even when they are wrong. The only thing you an do is not let them pull you over to begin with by doing whatever you have to. Many times I just plain out run them by splitting lanes at a higher speed than they can safely go and then take an exit once I know they are far enough behind.
I really wish there was some government grant that would help pay for schooling so these officers could get higher education and then real jobs that benefit society, instead of having one designed to encourage them to make peoples lives miserable and having the authority to do whatever they want. They are in control. After Ive shown them it's not illegal to carry a dog and ask if I can go, and they say no, there is nothing you can do. One human being with an attitude problem has been given power over another. I can say "sorry but you are incorrect, I am leaving" and speed off. But they will feel the need to chase after you and I'm sure they would then somehow justify shooting me or something. It's sad. But I do everything possible now to avoid dealing with these complete morons.
Luckily all the cops around here know who I am and know I'm not breaking any laws and some even stop at lights to say how they love how happy my dog is or to ask questions about how I trained her to ride so well or just give me the thumbs up. That's the thing. Some cops are cool people and good at heart. It's just that 99% of them give the 1% a bad name.
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Well that sucks. Terry. While the CHP motor officers are pretty cool, those other cops from local city jurisdictions, and especially the San Mateo Sheriff's office, can be uninformed jerks. Best of luck today, but I bet you get pulled over for sure for carrying Charger on your bike. I am looking forward to seeing you and Charger today and hearing more about your interaction with the police - who (in CA, at least), I might add, get paid a lot more than you might think, especially when you include all of the benefits and a very generous retirement plan that lets them retire when they reach 50 years of age with typically 90% of their highest salary for the rest of their lives.
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Sorry to hear that Terry.
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I'll meet you again on another day Richard. There's 100% chance at least 1 of the departments will pull me over, and there's a 99% chance the cop who does is an idiot. So it means I'm signing myself up to waste a day going to San Mateo county court to have to appear in person to get another ticket dropped. I would just try to out run them if they try to pull me over, but I know they will be at all ends of Skyline drive so I don't think that's a good idea. But recently outrunning them is the only thing that works really well. Trying to pull over and reason with them doesn't work well. I've learned that you can't deal with these people and you just have to do what you have to do. Many on this forum might not think outrunning cops is a good idea, but I promise you if you've been through what I have you'd realize that outrunning them is the only thing you can do to protect yourself. Even when they are wrong, once you pull over, make no mistake, they are in control. You can not just leave at that point. Even after you have clearly shown them their reason for initiating a stop was invalid.
I have missed important meetings and events because I am at the mercy of some cop who feels he can hold me as long as he wants while he tries to fabricate something. I've learned just don't put yourself in that situation. Don't pull over. As soon as you see them coming, accelerate fast and get the hell away from him, just do so in a manner that isn't blatent that he is aware you saw him. That's the only thing you can do. So far it works pretty well. No tickets in the past few months, usually I evade a cop who is turning around to follow me every few days when I travel. It happened almost daily when I was in Los Angeles helping my friend Brandon Miller for a month. That's a lot of tickets that I've avoided, although I shouldn't have gotten any of them anyway. When I think about what I've been forced to do I realize our whole police system is just a little bit on the silly side the power they have being as poorly trained as many of them are, and they fact they carry a gun. I'm surprised more innocent people aren't shot from these idiots as their reasoning and decision making skills surely doesn't warrant their position from my experience.
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#BarkRidesMatter
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OK Terry. See you and Charger on September 10th. :)
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#BarkRidesMatter
Lol, I should make this as a bumper sticker and put it on my Givi case.
Sorry I got a little heated in my last post because this is incredibly frustrating for me. I met the guys at Zero this morning. Jackson, Kate, Brody and Bagel and really wanted to ride with them. I rode to highway 9 with them and then turned around, extremely upset that I can not find a simple solution to this problem.
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-02-22/local/me-38569_1_ride-dogs-motorcycle (http://articles.latimes.com/1996-02-22/local/me-38569_1_ride-dogs-motorcycle)
If anyone has any suggestion on how to comply with each officer by pulling over, but quickly stating that it is not illegal and I must be going now and keeping the stop to under 30 seconds each time it happens let me know. I would never encourage anyone to out run the cops, but in my situation its the best way so far to deal with it and works quite well. Especially with the SR size 6, 660 amp controller its almost effortless to make the red and blue lights tiny specs in the mirrors quite quickly, and finally disappear. But I don't like I'm forced to do this.
Any suggestions?
Surely I'm not the only person in the US who rides with a dog on a motorcycle. I wonder how others deal with the constant harassment?
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Well, it looked pretty quiet today (LEO-wise). I only saw one cop handing out a ticket to a sportbike rider. I have no idea why. ??? Perhaps his license plate was installed at the wrong angle? A CHP sergeant was watching the 35/84 intersection but apparently didn't observe anything worth his attention. Plenty of H-D's saving a lot of lives with their straight pipes, but that didn't seem to interest anyone carrying a ticket book. Shortly after we got a seat at Alice's the last two cops retired to parts unknown and were not seen again before we left. Perhaps the squad of quiet electric motorcycle riders scared them off. ;) All in all a nice day for a lunch at Alice's. Too bad I forgot to bring my camera to memorialize the moment. :(
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That was a blast. A dozen people showed up, mostly Zeros but two Energica too. Did learn that the direct ride up Page Mill Road does exist, and that it's quite a climb (and triggers the overheat light on my SR) and that the people who make the Zero's batteries are local and have some amazing battery testing equipment that can drain or charge a battery to or from the grid at rates of hundreds of kilowatts. The Energica were cool if a bit out of the price range for my style (commuter frankenbike). Wish I'd remembered to take pictures.
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Picture of our Energica guerrilla-marketing party crashing friends at the Palo Alto meetup start. The employees and bikes both were pretty cool, though ;)
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Wow Terry - it seems that the cops in your area have nothing better to do. Where I live they are too busy with drive-by shootings to bother with traffic enforcement ;-)
I did notice a few cops on yesterday's ride, but I didn't know about this 'STEP' thing until after the ride.
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Here are a couple of short video clips from yesterday's ride for those not on Facebook:
https://youtu.be/nQIG4NVcvF4
https://youtu.be/JbGlfCRmpY0
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Here are a couple of short video clips from yesterday's ride for those not on Facebook:
https://youtu.be/nQIG4NVcvF4
https://youtu.be/JbGlfCRmpY0
Nice videos, thanks for posting. That first one riding northbound on Skyline, just north of Page Mill, is where I like to go hiking (at Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve, at the left) during weekdays. :)
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That was a blast!
Next one would be 17 September, assuming we continue the 3rd Saturday tradition.
Picture of our Energica guerrilla-marketing party crashing friends at the Palo Alto meetup start. The employees and bikes both were pretty cool, though ;)
It wasn't a Zero-only event, it was a Electric Motorcyclers' event!
I'm glad no fights broke out.
As Elon Musk likes to say, electric vehicles are not the competition, the competition is the internal combustion engine!
I think Zeros are the best value for the money, and the Energica fit a different niche.