Beware of paranoid police in southern Arizona!
I've just had an interesting experience with Arizona Police in Yuma who were insistent that I could not travel on UK plates in America and that no foreign bike had ever done it before.
It took a very long time and a lot of him shouting and fingering his gun nervously before he agreed not to take my number plate off the bike.
He clearly had a big attitude for a tiny mind, but his superiors told him at the base that he was right and it was illegal to use any vehicle on the road in the USA if it didn't have US plates.
He'd been in the job 25 years and he knew all of the laws there were to know.
It was only when he accepted that I could never then leave the US with my bike if he took its identity away, that he let me keep it.
It was a while longer before he tore up the $600 fine.
My explaining the carnet system and the idea of just passing through the US led to him shouting
"Don't you feed bullshit to a bullshitter son".
I felt it best to not point out what he had just said.
Anyway, just though I'd let you all know, there are some nutters in uniform out there
Paddy
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