Pas-De-Deux On Pine Avenue
Pas-de-deux on Pine Avenue
AT LARGE
Steven L. Thompson
HEAVING THEIR GLEAMING BLACKand-white behemoths through lockto-lock turns in almost perfect unison, the two motorcycle cops concentrated on their task with the intensity of GP racers. Because of their dark sunglasses, I couldn't see their eyes as they snaked through the maze of cones. But I knew from the way their heads remained locked on their targets while their bodies and bikes wove and danced under them how hard they concentrated. These two immaculately dressed motor officers from the Oakland office of the California Highway Patrol were totally immersed in their tasks.
Dazzled by their dance, I didn’t think, standing on the edge of the 4000-strong crowd lining Pine Avenue in Pacific Grove, how valuable, on their riders’ beats, might be the abilities being so dramatically displayed. How essential the ability to concentrate utterly, how vital that eerie knack for coordinating each move with a partner/wingman, how important that array of skills necessary for working the clumsy cop-cycle as though it were a skinny dirtbike.
But after the Oakland CHP made its two-man synchronized run through the 750-foot course laid out by Officer Craig Mosher of the Pacific Grove PD, 1 began to understand why the 17 teams who’d competed so hard inside their own police departments to be here thought so much of a competition which at first blush might seem just so much Saturday silliness.
The Annual Pacific Grove Motor Officer’s Charity Invitational Riding Competition had been created initially by Officers Mosher and Richard Cox with PGPD Chief Thomas Maudlin, as a departmental contribution to the town’s annual “Good Old Days” festival. A little PR, a little charity fund-raising, a little fun. But it had quickly grown in stature over its four-year lifespan until all over the state of California, in every place where guys wear badges and ride bikes, it had become a prestigious test of men and machines.
It was not just a showcase of skills,
I realized as the enthusiastic applause of the spectators rewarded the CHP. This was America connecting with itself, its real self, in what was nothing less than a modern-day, road-going version of a frontier rodeo, and these cops were our modern cowboy deputies, strutting their stuff. But instead of riding bulls, they wrestled Hogs.
The contest had begun early in the morning with a white-glove inspection of the men and machines in the Pacific Grove Bank of America parking lot. Marine drill instructors from the nearby Defense Language Institute had performed their stone-faced, minute inspections with rigor. They even checked the insides of the exhaust pipes.
Why such an inspection? Craig Mosher, in explaining how he came to help define the competition, noted how important is the appearance of a policeman: Slovenly cops can hardly command respect. But in understanding the Invitational, it helps to know that Mosher, 43, spent 22 years in the Army, including three years in Vietnam. It helps to know that he began riding at 1 3, and that his first bike was a Triumph Bonneville. It helps, too, that he seems to have a canny understanding of what makes a good show great.
What makes the PG Invitational a great show is its unique requirement that the riders negotiate their conemarked courses not only as quickly as possible but as a team, as perfectly synchronized as they can manage. What might be a simple handling test thus becomes a combination race and motorized ballet as the motocops use everything from hand signals to radios to execute each turn, each stop, each acceleration, in harmony.
To say this is not easy is to say the obvious to any motorcyclist who has ridden in close formation. What is not obvious is how fascinating the attempt to do it perfectly becomes for everyone watching. Especially when the riders wear badges and guns.
Behind their shades and professionally impassive faces, they were mysterious men. What did any of us civilians know about them? I listened to the crowd joke about “CHiPs” and Electra Glide in Blue and realized that Craig Mosher hadn’t just given us all a Saturday diversion. He and his colleagues had provided us a bridge, via bikes and cones and competition, to Americans who not only take the risks of every motorcyclist, but also the risks of every policeman.
But whatever else they do, sometimes motor officers turn riding into sport, just like us. The conclusion of the Invitational was a block-long drag race past a departmental radar gun (best speed: almost 59 mph), followed by an impressive display of riding skills by the 1 6-man Oakland PD motorcycle drill team. Oakland, indeed, captured first and second places, the CHP office taking the perpetual trophy from the police department. The winners mugged, and the losers grimaced and promised to settle the score next year.
Which is now this year. And because of the FI M’s grand prix race schedule, the Fifth Annual Motor Officer's Charity Invitational Riding Competition is something that more than a few motorcyclists can experience, since it will be held on the Saturday (April 20) of the United States Grand Prix weekend at nearby Laguna Seca.
No doubt a lot of the motorcyclists who come to the Monterey Peninsula that Saturday will spend the hours between noon and 3 at the track, ogling GP riders and hardware. If so, they’ll be missing some of the best ballet anywhere. At Laguna, you can see amazing solo acts. But on Pine Avenue, the pas-de-deux is the order of the day. You might call it a specialty of the Corps.
Which Corps? The Corps de Bullet, of course.
