Life over the past year was complicated by a pandemic, the relentless march of aging, and the seemingly endless tasks of daily life. My Vespa scooter helped ease the pain.

Surrendering the Fantasy

I’ve become more willing to accept that my life is in a continual, endless cycle of change. There was a time, decades in fact, that I struggled to keep things “under control,” the same, predictable, and unchanging. I was facing upstream in the rushing current of life until I finally raised the white flag of surrender and allowed the river to sweep me away.

And with that surrender came victory. A life in the flow. I’ll still find myself standing up to fight, but my Vespa scooter helps me accept the inevitable march of change. It blazes a path toward balance.

I used to judge riding by measures of quantity — how often I was on the road, how many miles I gathered, the number of experiences collected, how many photographs were made.  I would tell myself riding was a way of life, a manner of living, with the goal of always traversing the landscape on two wheels. I won’t lie, it was a seductive fantasy. But one I had to surrender like all the others in my life.

Standing in a farm field on my way to breakfast surveying the sweep of landscape that sums up the place I live, the mountains, fields, and forests of central Pennsylvania, I’m struck my the fact that I arrived with no plan or expectation other than a friend asked me if I wanted to ride to breakfast.