It felt like I getting in a clown car. The tiny scooter. I could hardly believe I was thinking that when I got back on the Vespa minutes after returning a Kawasaki KLR 650. The nature of the KLR kept my shoulders spread and my legs extended more fully while riding. The close, compact riding position of the GTS seemed almost shocking and a rush of thoughts appeared in my head that scooter riding was finished, spoiled by the recent riding of motorcycles. For a few moment scooter innocence and simplicity abandoned me as I rode towards home.
It didn’t take long to find my place on the Vespa. A few rides to work, a few errands and the he earnest utility of the scooter becomes apparent. By Thursday morning I was back in the groove as I headed south of town towards Rock Springs.
Still can’t pass up an interesting path. A photographic treasure could lurk that way. With corn over eight feet tall there are a lot of mysterious farm lanes around. The scooter readily runs along the gravel lanes at slow, explorer speeds. I sacrifice a few extra minutes to check around a few bends in the corn.
Another quick stop at Gate D of the Penn State Ag Research Center to survey the for for pictures. It had become a uniform grey with little subject matter to give the fog any personality. Disappointed I ride on towards my morning work assignment.
Ag Progress Days begin next week and 40-50 thousand people will arrive to check out the latest agricultural innovations in machines, management, livestock and more. I’ve ridden out to help set lights for one of the exhibit buildings. A day of physical labor will remind me of the current status of my body.
I admire how you can get away with far more parking options with a scooter than you can with a motorcycle. I see them around town parked in little places behind utility poles, odd spaces in parking lots, next to bike racks, etc. One definite advantage of the smaller scooters. My Vespa GTS250 is right on the edge of being too big to play invisible.
The Vespa has returned to my riding life and the clown car has reappeared as a real machine capable of real travel. And it delivers more fun than I have a right to expect. If my scooter had a name I think I would owe it an apology…
Steve,
Ah, I feel like the world is back in order again. Enough with the flashy lights and zip zip ness.
Your scooter needs to be named. And since you and your scooter are one, how about “just right.”
Tim
If Ironman can name his steed,
you can name your ride!
Like my cats, my scooter had a name when I got it: Vespa GTS 250i.e., or The GTS for short.
Steve, it seems you and I are the only ones who don’t name our machines…
__Orin
Scootin’ Old Skool
Steve
for a second there, when you called the little Vespa a “clown car”, I thought the dealer’s machiavellian plan to let you borrow his motorcycles had worked and you were forever swayed over to larger two-wheeled vehicles….
glad to see all is back to normal in terms of your feelings about riding the Vespa….truly, you do need to name her.
Redleg’s Rides
I love the photo in the corn stalks and your right there is something mysterious about the fields. I think it has to be trauma from watching Children of the Corn at a young age.
I have been very interested in your thoughts regarding riding other vehicles. I have often wondered how I might react in a similar situation.
I am pleased that you have apparently found the GTS as useful and fun as always. I rode my scooter for the first time in 2 weeks today after my injury. I missed riding a lot. Given other motivations such as touring or faster speeds, another machine could very well tempt me. But for the type of riding I do, the scooter is nearly perfect for me.
Tim: All is right with the world! I continue to find the scooter a good fit for my daily transportation routine and an able participant in my longer travels.
But I can’t say I don’t find the motorcycles seductive. And for some things definitely superior tools. I am going to remain as open as I can to them as I ride different things. But right now the Vespa remains just right. Or pretty close to it for me.
Bryce: I’ve never named any machine. Dogs and kids yes. But the scooter? My dad seldom used my name and always called me “boy” or “the boy” when referring to me with others. And I don’t think he was a Tarzan movie fan either.
Perhaps that’s why I always refer to the Vespa as “the scooter”.
Orin: I guess you and I are really the only rebels left. We just hate to conform. It’s why we have a Vespa.
We don’t need no stinkin’ names…
Charlie6: You and me both. I had a few moments of great concern. It was definitely an “oh no” moment. But the Vespa is again a completely functional ride but I must confess there are moments when I remember twisting the throttle of other machines….
No name. I can’t do it. It feels false to me. Like selling out. Like eating carob instead of chocolate.
Rob: Corn fields can be really creepy. Even in bright sun. I’ve seen Children of the Corn but my feelings predate that.
I bet it is some sort of genetic imprinting from ancient times when a sabertooth cat might grab us in the tall grass…
cpa3485: I think you have hit the nail on the head — a motorcycle could be the better choice for touring on more intense commuting at longer distances. Riding the motorcycles has expanded my understanding or their utility.
It has also raised my awareness of their seductive side — power. Power for faster movement and power for psychic support. The old personal power by association thing. It was weird how I somehow felt more — dare I say it — potent.
It was weird. And not unpleasant. But I saw how that could lead to some unfortunate choices while riding and may be involved in a few of the riding mishaps that occur on the road when someone rides well beyond their skills because they feel like they are more powerful than they are.
All of that is manageable I guess as long as you are aware of it and make sure that the bike remains a tool to an end and not an ego supplement.
The Vespa doesn’t place me in that place. It puts me in other places…
Steve,
Glad you have ventured and returned. I continue to enjoy scooters where all my other riders have gone to bigger bikes. Its just that I am a bit eccentric and favor the big word “Efficiency” to fit my daily life and routines. I am sure the AG show will remain focus to some extent on the Green Effect where personally my brain activity situated. I like your final thoughts on your scooter…A good fit and not an Ego supplement. The “ID” has not taken control of you. Glad to hear you back. Besides just buy one of those dual purpose bikes for those really extreme off-road adventure “Remember Long Way Down”.
Ride safe
PHIL
It’s good to know that true good, old friends stick by us when we return…no matter how long we’ve been gone. Really true true friends will also selflessly share you…that KLR seems like it would be a nice big brother-sister sibling to the Vespa–IMHO
Steve, why do I always find something other than the scooter in your writing that compels me to comment?
The corn thing… What Rob said about Children of the Corn and what you said about the sabertooth cat lurking in the tall grass… I found myself wondering as soon as I saw the picture of the scooter in the cornfield if those “Corn” movies are so darned creepy because of some kind of Jungian archetype of corn or if the movies have given growing corn the ability to raise the hairs on the backs of our necks. Either way, I find myself wanting to eat loads of it this time of year. Maybe to strip the creepy fields bare of it!
– Joe at Scootin’ da Valley
Pvino: I agree with your sentiments about efficiency. For my daily riding habits the Vespa fits them well. Just today I met a friend out on the road and while parked he mentioned how easy it is for me to just put the Vespa up on the stand and jump off to take a picture compared to what he must do with his BMW RT1150. But for his riding the BMW makes a lot of sense.
To each need there is an appropriate scooter or motorcycle.
I also second your thoughts about a KLR. Please inform my wife.
Sojourner rides: More fuel for the KLR fire. A big brother makes sense.
Joe: I’ll have to look into corn fear. Something there I think. Perhaps an Iowan or Nebraskan can pipe in with some corn lore…
I like riding my wife’s Helix or my little TW200 Yamaha but I wouldn’t want those as my only bikes. For gobbling up miles some physical size for comfort and displacement for power is needed.
Besides, I think this says it all, Steve:
http://tinyurl.com/qek3nd
Doug
Steve:
I agree that scooters and bikes are machines for different purposes. they each have their place. I have more or less always had a m/c. The scooter is my commuting vehicle, the other for the highway.
bob
bobskoot: wet coast scootin
Dear Steve:
Returning to the Vespa can easily be accepted as a metaphor for returning to a kind of reality. Sometimes we see a big part of ourselves in the machines we ride. I see you gradually acknowledging that the simple scooter is a part of your life that doesn’t clutter your thoughts with temptation. Or visions of a longer, more powerful reach that could eventually foster dissatisfaction in other areas. The scooter does not attempt to muddle your interpretation of life around you. It brings you to the source of pictures and asks, “How about this one?
The motorcycle is different. It is tanned, 22-year-old beauty queen, wrapped in a towel, whispering that you can do anything you like, just by twisting that right handgrip. And with each click of the gearshift, the towel drops a little lower, until you can only stare at the road, or risk certain death.
While you are happy to frame your scooter in the fog down the road, the motorcycle won’t look half as good unless the fog is on the coast of Maine. And if you think hard enough about the knobby tires, you will no longer feel like a man until you ride to Maine along powerline right of ways.
This is not my idea. Blame it on Darwin. His book, “Two-Wheeled Evolution” was widely banned by the Catholic Church.
But there is nothing to prevent you from getting a motorcycle i addition to the scooter. And you could name them “Id” and “Ego.” Or “Repression” and “Release.”
By the way, I think you should have photo shopped the picture of your scooter against the fog, until the white signpost disappeared, and the blue sign looked to be suspended on hope.
Fondest regards,
Jack • reep • Toad
Twisted Roads
The title of the post sounds like a cheap B movie!
It just goes to illustrate what I was telling Katie the other night. Of course, I was talking about women, but it also applies to bikes.
You don’t have to test ride every bike in the dealership to know which one is right for you.
Of course, reading Jack’s comments always makes one tend to think less than pure thoughts. Wasn’t there a song that says,
“If you marry an ugly woman you’ll be happy for life!”?
Quick to add a disclaimer, I am not married to an ugly woman and am quite happy!
P.S.
My comment about an ugly woman is in no way, shape, or form, to be taken as referring to the Vespa. That is a beautiful machine!
“The Return of the Vespa”
so, were all the participants happy?
Doug K: I’m still mixed in my thinking about a big bike for long rides versus the scooter. Obviously the bigger machines can do it faster, smoother and in more comfort. There is the rub for me though. Some part of me doesn’t want to go faster or have things be easy. A little struggle is good for the soul I think. It may explain why I ride in the winter.
But I know what you mean about the differences. Having a second machine would be nice for options. I don’t always want to struggle!
Jack Riepe: A great series of comments on your part. Too bad you made it here. It would be the basis for some fine writing on your blog.
Your metaphor of the beauty queen, while funny, is pretty much right on target. The throttle is seductive and it is really easy to keep twisting it for the payoff it brings regardless of the danger. It takes some real maturity to not jump into the abyss. It is probably the basis of licensing arguments against teenagers having powerful machines. Or drinking.
I’m going to have to think about the motorcycle on the Maine coast. Don’t get me wrong, I would live to ride on the Maine coast, but I do believe there is magic close to home that we miss because we believe it only exists somewhere else.
So, maybe, maybe a second machine is in order. For now I am just going to be a tourist riding what I can and reserve a choice until some future date. I haven’t checked the lottery number today to see if I won the 245 million. If I do I’ll pick up something up today.
irondad: You don’t have to test every bike in the dealership but if you can….
Was something wrong when you posted? You seemed to be in danger of putting your foot in your mouth twice—once with the marrying an ugly woman comment and again with the Vespa.
You’ll get in trouble like that you know! *grin*
bryce: Yes, all participants were happy. And Kim was happy to see me back on my Vespa.