My little brother got popped last Saturday for pretty much the same thing. He got the bike last April off some guy in L.A. I kept telling him to register and insure the thing and he kept telling me next week blah, blah, blah.
My cousin and his buddy rode down from out of town to ride with us last weekend. We fueled up in Montecito and were going to jump on the 192 and head up to the 154 and ride to San Ynez. As we left the gas station my brother took the lead and I pulled out behind him. I looked back for my cousin and I see a double headlight and thought the gsxr750 doesn't have a light like that, so I took a double take and noticed it was a CHP. I gained a little speed on my brother and honked and tapped my helmet and he thought I was motioning for him to take a right and flips his blinker last minute and jumps into the right turn lane. He gets pulled over and cop runs his license. The turd had a failure to appear and his permit had expired a year ago and to top it off his license had expired on his Bday in July. So, I'm sitting there next to him adding in my head. warent, expired license, no endorsements, no registration or insurance and failure to use a blinker. Then the officer points out that the tag on his bike that expired last April was a stolen tag (the fucker he got the bike from put a stolen tag on it). I'm thinking, oh shit, 7 citations he's going to jail. Well the cop started to feel bad for him and even after my brother started to give him attitude and decides him, nor his partner who pulled up afterwards want to fill out a report on a Saturday.
He ends up getting citted for registration, insurance, and no blinker and the bike was towed and I had to ride him home. If he had given him the riding on a suspended license his bike would have been impounded for 30 days.
It cost him $600 today to register, insure, and pay impound. $300 was the impound fee. Much more than his FTA ticket would have been if he had taken care of it in the first place. He learned his lesson today and a lawyer friend is going to take care of his tickets for him and he is staying off the bike till his license is square. He totally lucked out this weekend, it could have been way more expensive and a lot worse if he had gotten pulled over by a cop in a bad mood or one that hates bikers.
Wow! sorry, post was kind of long.