They call me Gringo here, altough Ime from Europe...Every week I dive into the traffic jams to get into the city of Salvador Brasil. it's a 25 km ride, 50 back and fort.
I love riding the GS 500 here its holding up perfectly in the traffic and in this heat about 30 Celsius with no watercooling let alone aircooling. this baby is getting real hot but does not complain. The average driver here has a 125cc Honda or similair. If you have a 250 Honda twister your a big gun here, Also Ime the only one with protective clothing, the majority of bikers moves around in shorts and toslipper passing me by on every occasion left or right. even if Ime driving between lanes they pas me by with fancy moves when I get stuck between cars. they must be smaller than mine. Ime getting used to it all. is lane splitting considered passing between two busses with les than one inch between my mirrors? Until now I have hit 3 car mirrors with my handles, speed about 50 km's good that these mirrors bend easily. day before yesterday one of these motorboy's ( as they call them here ) hit a car in front of me he hit the deck and was hopping around on one leg while some people where pulling up his bike. ( he hit a car that was changing lanes ). I caught myself driving between lanes at higher speeds as well, the explanation for this is simpel,.traffic here is so densed that the cagers don't give any room to bikers front or back. imagine yourself driving 80 km's with a car 2 meters in front of you and one 1,50 behind you. so what I used to do, take some distance. unfortunate this will only create space for another car in front of you, yep, about 2 meters. If one of these cagers would hit full brakes your fried...so gradually you start manouvering between lanes wich would give you some more braking distance.
I would like to shoot one of these trips, I could mount my Olympus 1030 on the steering, maybe make a contraption to move the camera with my left thumb. I have an 2 MB chip how much film would that make? or maybe tape it on my helmet. would have been spectaculair this week I was driving trough a shooting in the suburbes...

drive safe,..

Peter

sounds like a nightmare actually.. come by to seattle... people will actually give you 2 seconds of distance behind you.

WOW. umm, that isnt riding, thats HELL.   here you can get up to 30 seconds of distance between you on some roads.  Come to FL and tell me how it feels, you'll probably never want to leave it.

POST SOMETHING! Vids, pics, whatever    we love pics

yeah, I was lane splitting rush hour x-way traffic at 110 week before last due to an emergency(father had a stroke and was in really bad shape)  I wont be doing that again anytime soon....i hope..  I reserve that manuever for emergencies only.  Normally traffic here isnt that bad.  It was just really bad that day and I had 20 miles to cover really fast. 

toyopete,

Have you looked at starting work at a different time (if you are allowed)?  My drive into work was cut down to 22 minutes with very little traffic (I get to work by 6am), from a 45 to 55 minute commute and 80% bumper-to-bumper if I leave three hours later (around 9am).

My trip home includes some back roads (including some twisties) that takes a little longer but is much more enjoyable (traffic keeps moving and if it stops, there is room to get round the cars).

As soon as I find a way and oportunity Ill take some pictures...probably with my daughter on the back.