OLD BLASTARD: Waiting for go … doh!

Six a.m. Sunday and the feeling's gone. My bum's dead as wood and my back is sore.  Johnny Law's Ablemarle County cousin Bobby Joe Law has got two Honda Accords pulled over  and the damn stop light at U.S. 250 and Interstate 64 ain't budging for my Buell Blast.

Worse, I'm in the left turn lane at the freeway. I can't even turn right to bang a U-ey and turn right to get through the light. If I turn right -- which requires crossing two lanes of nonexistant traffic, I have to go westbound on the highway when I want to go eastbound.

It happens a lot. At 350 pounds in a rainstorm, the Blast is a  lightweight bike. It will fly around corners but it won't trip a traffic light. I've been waiting here for about five minutes and I'm getting itchy. I'd pop through this sucker in a heartbeat, but Bobby Joe doesn't necessarily have a sense of humor about disregarding traffic control devices. I'm thinking that showing up at the Central Virginia Motorcycle School in Orange to teach an advanced rider course with a freshly minted 3-point violation would be viewed as a bad thing.

I'd give it a go, but you never know with the Law family. The motor brothers cut some slack now and then because they know what it's like to mess around with traffic lights or be caught behind a semi on the freeway or U.S. 29. When you gotta get by the truck bastards, you gotta get by now. They've been  known, after all, to shed chunks of rubber and run over the top of smashed Bambis.

Ever hurdle a dead and broken Bambi at 65 mph on your   Gold Wing because you followed a little too close behind a truck and didn't see it coming? It's  no fun. Don't ask how I know that. A real traffic cop, one on a bike, would know that and understand.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of unreal lawmen out there and a lot of them like to write tickets, especially for bikes. Something about crushing freedom beneath the jackboot heel of authority and all that, I suppose.

Speaking of authority, if the state legislature had passed House Bill 752 this winter, I wouldn't have this problem. The bill would have given Powered Two Wheelers the right to blow the light if the damn thing stayed red.

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, if a driver of a motorcycle or moped or a bicycle rider approaches an intersection that is controlled by a traffic light, the driver  or rider may proceed through the intersection on a steady red light only if the driver or rider (i) comes to a full and complete stop at the intersection for 120 seconds, (ii) exercises due care as provided by law, (iii) otherwise treats the traffic control devices as a stop sign, and (iv) determines that it is safe to proceed"

That's what the bill stated. I personally think two minutes isn't quite enough.  I, after all, have been sitting for at least five with no cars this early on a Sunday to roll up behind me and trip the light fantastically.

The House tried to pass the law. It was passed by the transportation subcommittee of the House Committee on Transportation and by the committee itself. It was voted down on the floor, however.

Apparently not to many legislators ever threw a leg over.