Sat. Jan. 22, 2011
I met Luis and his wife Miriam at their house this afternoon around 2:30 and we drove to a gas station where Martin and his wife Maria Ines were waiting for us. After checking tire pressures, we headed south out of Santiago in the hot afternoon sun. We were to meet Guillermo and his wife Veronica at a Copec gas station just south of Rancagua an hour south of Santiago on the Pan American Highway (Rt. 5) at around 3:30pm. When we arrived I found we had picked up another rider that was headed in the same direction and so Guillermo invited him to ride with us. His name is German Larrain, as I later found out at our first fuel stop. He was also riding a BMW R1200GS and as the conversation went on, German stated that he had worked at a company in Rochester, New York called Eastman Kodak Co. You might have heard of it! German spent 20 years at this little Company. He was an Engineer of some kind there. Well, right away we had something in common, he rides a GS and I ride a GS. He spent 20 years at Kodak, and I spent 27 years at Kodak. German also repairs BMW motorcycles in Santiago and has all the high tech equipment needed to do so. I’ll be calling on him!
Later in the afternoon we stopped in Curico to get a quick bite to eat before pushing on to Los Angeles. This is where we said goodbye to German. After passing thru one of the toll plazas, the group became separated when some of us stopped to change into warmer jackets as the evening began to cool. Guillermo and I where the last of the group to leave the toll plaza and as we approached Los Angeles, Guillermo wanted to make up some lost ground and catch up to the rest of the group. We were clipping along at about 135km when off in the distance we spotted some red flashing lights in the darkness. Hmmm, I wonder if those are for us, I thought. Boy, was I right! I don’t mind being right, sometimes, but this wasn’t one of them. Two of Chiles finest motioned us both to the side of the road and told us they had us on laser doing 135 in a 120km area. Well, I handed the Officer my International Drivers License and my New York State drivers license and tried my best to tell him I was from out of the country and here on vacation, bla,bla,bla. At first I thought he was buying it, but I soon found out otherwise when he stated we were both getting tickets for speeding. My friend Guillermo was really laying it on thick, telling the other Officer that he was owner of a large construction firm and that he did work for the municipality at times and so on and so forth. That wasn’t working either! Finally the Officer that was holding my documents had a change of heart, and stated that he was not going to cite the Gringo (Me) but that Guillermo was going to get a ticket. Now, One thing I failed to mention, when you get a ticket here, they take away your license on the spot and you don’t get it back until you have gone to court to settle the fine. Now, remember I mentioned something about going to Argentina in previous posts? If you get a ticket here, you can’t leave the country because you don’t have a license. Argentina won’t allow you into the country without a license. This was going downhill faster than we had!!
Guillermo and the rest of the group are scheduled to depart on a Cruise to southern Chile this coming Sunday for five days, and when they return, we are all going to Argentina. At least that is the plan. While I was counting my lucky stars, Guillermo was still trying to talk the Cop out of a ticket, but it wasn’t working, so Guillermo decided to go at this from another angle. He resigned himself to the fact he was getting a ticket and switched to, how can I get this taken care of and still make the cruise and the trip to Argentina. Well, as it turns out, Luis has a brother in Los Angeles who knows the Judge. See where this is headed?
Anyhow, bright and early tomorrow both Guillermo and Luis’ brother are headed over to see if they can get the Judge to show some leniency so that this will end happily ever after.
To be continued!
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