Ain't that the truth!

 

Yeah, even in Montana. I once went there to shoot prairie dogs. Stopped at a gas station and asked, "where can we hunt prairie dogs". The guy picked up the phone and called a local land owner. He put down the phone, went to the window, came back over and picked up the phone and said, "Washington". After telling us where to go shoot, we asked why he had to look at our vehicle. He said, "because we don't want any damned Californians up here.
What's really funny is that after a Californian lives here a decade or so, they can't stand Californians either. Not one word of that is made up, so bash away, but it is true. How much you make, and how many expensive toys you own is not the answer to "how are you doing?".

 

Another California expert who doesn't know what he's talking about.



MOTORCYCLE HELMET ENFORCEMENT
Current California Highway Patrol (CHP) motorcycle helmet policy Is the result of several court decisions and the terms of a partially-vacated decision placed against the Department which make It extremely difficult to cite motorcyclists for wearing helmets not in compliance with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) #218.

With approval of the 2009 Uniform Bail SchedUle, a citation for a violation of California
Vehicle Code (VC) Section 27B03(b) or (c), when wearing a non compliant head
covering, can be eligible for correction.

As a result. the CHP is revising its policy to reflect the,following:

Officers shall not cite for hard shell beenie type helmets.

Officers shall not seize any helmet. or purported helmet as evidence.

Supervisor approval shall be obtained before citing a motorcyclist for wearing any type of head covering an officer determines is not a motorcycle helmet
• A photograph of the noncompliant head covering should be obtained at the time of the stop as evidence to support the violation.
-Section 27803(b) VC should be used to cite the operator of a motorcycle, a motor-driven cycle, or motorized bicycle for not wearing a safety helmet, or for allowing a passenger to ride without a motorcycle safety helmet.
•
Normally, the driver should not be issued a citation for a passenger 16 years of age or older not wearing a motorcycle safety helmet when the passenger has been issued a citation for a 'violation of Section 27803(c) ve.
•
Section 27803(c) VC should be used to cite the passenger of a motorcycle, a motor-driven cycle. or motorized bicycle for not wearlng a safety helmet.

Officers shall focus enforcement action on the following:
•
Motorcyclists not wearing any type of head covering.
•
Motorcyclists wearing a head covering which is obviously not a motorcycle helmet, such as a styrofoam bicycle helmet, football helmet, ball cap, scarf, stocking cap; leather aviator cap, any variation of a fabric cap. etc.

 

Me? I'm doing just fine thank you.

Both my wife and I retired last year at age 56. House paid for. All four bikes, boat, RV and everything else paid for. We can live anywhere we want. We choose to work around the politics and live here. I couldn't be more thankful for the opportunities we had in California. We're just a couple of high school graduates who started out so broke that we had to borrow the money for our $200.00 wedding in Lake Tahoe. Twenty eight years later and we'll never have to work another day in our lives.

I do some volunteer work but right now there's too much fun stuff to do here all year long and we have nothing but time to do it.

 

Wow,,, how big is your boat? What kind of RV do you have? Believe it or not we have pavement on the street by my house, so we are doin pretty good too. I grew up six miles from the nearest paved road, and the people down at the bottom of the mountain thought they lived "out in the woods".
Now I live where you don't even need to carry a chainsaw in case there are trees on the road, and it has been years since I came home and found a free range bull standing in the driveway, so we are doin pretty well indeed.
Some may think I am kidding. NOT. Except those first couple sentences. I don't really want to know about your RV. As for being able to retire,,,, honestly. Congratulations. Not kidding about that at all. You are obviously no dummy, and I hope you live about as long a life as you want. Again,, not kidding.

 

Yup, thanks for that. I can confirm beanie and novelty helmets are technically OK in Ca.
Open exhaust is the only way you will get a noise ticket. And then you have to be stupid with the twist grip.

 

No I'm just a dummy that worked hard and invested smart (lucky). I guess some people live here because they have to. I live here because I want to.

Honestly, we talked about going to Arizona (Havasu) and /or the Florida Keys because we don't like the winters (or the politics) here all that much but the bottom line is there is no better place to us than the Sierra foothills and Lake Tahoe in the summertime.

I just bought a Handy Motorcycle Lift from a guy who was a Snap On dealer up your way before he retired and moved here.

The interesting thing to me is that all my friends are Republican. Almost everyone my wife or I ever worked with were Republicans. Hunters, sportsmen and NRA members. We hardly even know any Democrats. For some reason though, they're running the state.

 

Dem voters in the SF Bay Area and LA basin are the reason why dems are running the state.
There isn't enough voters in the Sierra foothills to cancel them out.

 

We have Seattle running/ruining our state. Who can understand the liberal ? Again, congrats on retiring. I may have to retire soon due to health stuff. The docs said I would never walk when I was born. Last February I got four big deck screws install to hold my pelvis together. All the liberals at work say "why don't you just quit and draw SCSI? And all the conservatives say "way to go man, keep going. When I look at the near 30K we paid in taxes this year, I start to think quitting and coin rid in would be a great idea.

 

The San Diego area is what I'm most familiar with, so others can comment on Bakersfield with far more authority than I. I can say I've lived in California for 30 years now. I grew up in Illinois and lived there til I was 20.

As a general rule all the liberal whacko concentrations are along areas of the coast. Once you get more than an hour away from the coast California is agricultural and mountainous. Ranches, horses and conservative people by far. Primarily the communists in San Francisco and Sacramento are the reason we're hostages to the craziness. When I moved here California was a solidly conservative state. Things have changed and I'm not exactly thrilled with what it's become. From what I know of the east coast states, a number of them seem to be far more liberal than California, so unless you're a big firearms fanatic you'll not necessarily be all that bothered by California's laws. Income taxes? Yes we have them, but most of California has 1% (of your original purchase price) annual property tax on homes. The OP says Bakersfield, so that's not exactly a mega-expensive area of CA to live so your annual property taxes won't be that bad unless you buy a huge home.

Now for example, Illinois I'm familiar with to some degree. If it weren't for commie/liberal Chicago (and Cook County) with it's gross corruption Illinois would be a very conservative agricultural state (same as 90% of the land mass population of CA is agriculture and conservative people). The dense concentration of Chicago ends up dominating the entire state and holding everyone hostage to it's idiocy. Same with CA and a handful of it's coastal cities full of libs. Illinois' gun laws are more strict than California's - all because of Chicago. Denver vs the rest of Colorado is another example of how a state can be hostage to a small enclave of whackos who dominate the rest of the population.

Sorry for wandering off topic. Now on to motorcycles. California arguably has the best riding on the planet. The weather in a huge portion of it is very mild and you can ride year around easily. I can log 30,000 miles a year routinely here. We have mountains, deserts and beaches that are all within one hour of one another. In Bakersfield you'll be able to wander out into the hills and mountains for some great rides. It's a bit hot in summer and can be cold at night in winter, but compared to a large part of the rest of the country the winters are very mild and won't stop you from riding.

All that said you'll enjoy riding in CA, it's some of the best in the world and it's year around. Cops don't seem to bother Harley riders at all in my experience. The time or two I've been pulled over (in 200,000+ miles of riding Harleys in this state) was cuz I was doing over 80 on the freeway. I've not heard any complaints from other friends who ride that cops bother riders. In my experience it's a total non-issue. Maybe in certain isolated jurisdictions the police are a PIA, but generally not at all unless you're being stupid.

I'm very conservative. I don't like some of the liberal idiosyncracies of CA, but in general it's a fun place to live. There are far more out-of-control liberal states than here. There are some that are far more conservative states than here. But in many/most of those you also freeze to death in winter and can only ride 4 to 6 months out of the year. Also, in many of those states in summer you're ravaged by humidity and bugs. In most of CA you'll almost never see a mosquito and humidity is around 10% to 50% at most. I lived in Illinois for 20 years, so I remember the horrid summers (and mosquitos!!) and even more horrid winters of the midwest. All in all, considering the ups and downs of politics, weather, scenery (and if your passion is riding) then it's not that bad a place to live if you compare other places with all their positives and negatives. Expensive to live? Yes if you live in the big coastal cities that's expensive. Bakersfield is relatively speaking a cheaper area of CA to live.