Scooter in the Sticks

Exploring life on a Vespa Scooter and Royal Enfield Himalayan motorcycle.

Risk Assessment When Moving From a Scooter to a Motorcycle

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BMW K75C motorcycle parked beneath a freeway overpass.
I’ve always known the motorcycle was heavy, but I didn’t consider what that meant in terms of protective gear.

A Heavy Pile of Steel

Reminders that trigger thoughts of risk assessment regarding my scooter or motorcycle are never far away.  A neighbor stopped by today and shared a few stories of riding friends and relatives that had unfortunate encounters with deer and ATVs.  It’s not uncommon to hear such things when someone discovers that I ride.

Risk assessment, training, practice, and appropriate riding gear have always been important to me since I started riding 16 years ago.  Any illusion that I knew “how to ride” based on the time I spent on motorcycles as a teenager was quickly dispelled at my first Motorcycle Safety Foundation Basic Rider Course class. While I could get on a motorcycle and make it go, I was woefully oblivious to how to be a rider in traffic with other human beings.  And decades of successful piloting of cars and trucks did little to inform me of the unique demands faced by being on two wheels.

Moving from a scooter to a motorcycle requires adjustment. A lot of people think the challenge is shifting and a clutch, but I’ve found the biggest challenge to be the difference in weight. My Vespa GTS 250 is around 335 pounds full of fuel, fluids, and gear. My BMW K75C with side cases and windscreen comes in at around 550 pounds. That’s considerably heavier not to mention the weight is higher up giving the motorcycle a distinct feel of being top-heavy. Switching back and forth between machines requires adjustment in my riding behavior and technique.

For several years I test rode motorcycles for Kissell Motorsports and was constantly moving from one machine to another. At each change, I did some basic practice with the new motorcycle to acclimate to its unique characteristics — clutch and throttle, emergency braking, slow speed maneuvers, etc. Those things gave me a good feel for the bike and what I could expect from myself and the machine.

So you would think that I had covered all the bases when it came to the scooter and motorcycle I own. But some recent reading about motorcycle injuries had me realizing I had left something out of my protective gear as it related to the motorcycle. I was set up for the Vespa and it’s comparatively light weight.

The weak link in my gear?

Boots.

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Gerbing Controller for Heated Gloves

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Gerbing Controller for Heated GlovesControlling the Heat

Just purchased a Gerbing Single Temperature Controller for my Gerbing electric gloves.  After a burn on my hand from direct power it was a necessary change.  The reason was simple — in past years I wore the gloves without any wind protection.  In cold weather the wind would render the gloves ineffective at below freezing temperatures so burns seemed an impossibility to me.  Looking back a a post from 2008 — 18º F and Gerbing Electric Gloves —  it seems I need to make a modification to Lesson One:

LESSON ONE: The gloves aren’t going to burn you. (They can burn if your hands are shielded from the wind) I don’t know where someone would get the idea that you could burn yourself with these gloves. At 32° F the elements are supposed to heat to 130° F. And the elements are insulated from directed contact with skin so no burning is going to take place. Using them at 18 ° at 50 MPH you can barely tell they are heating. At sub-freezing temperatures I don’t want a thermostat, I want full power. 

With the Tucano Urbano mitts shielding the wind the gloves get hot and will burn.  In that case I don’t always want full power.  I do want the controller.  Riding today at 35F I had them set to about 1/4 power and my hands were toasty.  It’s late in the winter riding season so I don’t know how much experimenting with low temperatures I’ll have but I’m ready for next winter.

Now on to some Vespa maintenance — oil and filter change to start.

Heated Gloves or Grips?

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For a long time I’ve struggled with this winter riding question — heated gloves or grips?

journal entry about heated gloves and gripsHandwritten Notes

Heated gloves and grips were on my mind while sitting in a waiting room writing.    I often start posts with notes, ideas corralled and collected for use later when I’m at a keyboard.  On Sunday morning I conducted some research on heated gear.

Gerbing electric glovesGerbing’s Electric Gloves

I’ve not tried my Gerbing electric gloves in over a year — dismissing them in favor of heated grips and Tucano Urbano muffs which keep the wind off my hands.  The question of heated gloves or grips didn’t surface until my hands started freezing at 10F.  Frustrated, I began looking at options and after some input from members of the ModernVespa.com site I decided to try the gloves again.

Vespa and Ducati on the roadOff to Breakfast

A Sunday morning ride to Lock Haven for breakfast and a 37F temperature presented the opportunity to try the gloves despite being convinced they wouldn’t keep my hands warm. I was also convinced the generator on the Vespa couldn’t power the grips and the gloves simultaneously but some experts on the Modern Vespa forum informed me otherwise.

So I plugged them in and was pleasantly surprised that they were hot.  Wired directly to the battery without a thermostat I had full power at my fingertips.  Poor Paul, despite heavy gloves and heated grips on his Ducati was suffering loss of feeling in his thumb and fingertips.

Market House restaurant in Lock Haven, PennsylvaniaMarket House Restaurant, Lock Haven, Pennsylvania

By the time we finished the 45 mile breakfast leg of the ride Paul was frozen and I was sporting hot hands.  So much so that I had a burn on my right hand — a small round burn that looked like someone put a cigarette out on me.

Still — hot hands!  That was reason to celebrate despite the burn.  I’ll track down that problem — perhaps a thermostat is in order.  But I’m convinced now I can ride in some pretty cold temperatures again.  Concern now has migrated from my hands to my feet.  If I can get them warm I’m set.

Onward!

Riding Boots

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Wolverine motorcycle riding bootsMy Father’s Non-Riding Boots

My riding boots are nothing special as far as boots go other than they started life with my father. He was not a motorcycle or scooter rider.  After he died they were in the box with some other clothes and things that came home with me.  They fit perfectly and are surprisingly comfortable as boots go.  When I started riding these became my footwear of choice, mainly because they happened to be here.  Riding is hard on the soles of boots and these were not up to the task wearing out quickly.

When the local cobbler learned I was using them while riding he said he would fix me up with some heavy duty soles that would not wear so fast.  That was somewhere around 2007 and they are still going strong.  The new soles are tough, weigh a ton and stand up to all the foot kicking and dragging I can dish out.

I’ve come to love these boots.

Rider's boots on the center line of a rural roadComfortable, Durable and Protective

Other than a new set of boot laces every once in awhile and some shoe polish when the spirit moves me I’ve not done much with the boots other than wear them.  They’re obviously not motorcycle boots by nature but provide a sense of warm comfort while riding.  I like to think my father is still powering them.

Snow, rain, mud, gravel and other challenges have not caused me to second guess my choice.  I know one day the leather will rip or some seam will fail too terrible for the cobbler to fix but until then I remain faithful to my Wolverine riding boots.

I know my father would hate the idea that I’m riding a scooter or motorcycle but maybe it would help knowing his boots were offering some protection.

Antigravity Batteries

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Vespa GTS scooterThis post is not about the Vespa.  It’s about the Honda Fit on the left side of the picture.  And everything I’m about to share is my dog Lily’s fault.  I happened like this…

On Thursday morning Lily, Junior and I piled into the Fit and went to the park.  While there, she took a predictable dump and me, being the responsible dog owner I am, gathered up the logs in a plastic bag. Since there were no public garbage cans available for disposal I tied the bag off and put it on the floor of the Fit to dispose of at home.  After some energetic tennis ball retrieval games we piled back into the car and went home.

Fast forward to Saturday morning when I get into the Honda Fit to look for my raincoat — I forgot the bag.  Two days of roasting temperatures transformed the inside of the car into some sort of cosmic level fragrance center.  It was bad.

Working quickly while holding my breath I get the windows down and abandon the car for later in the day.

Fast forward to Saturday evening when I go outside to close the car windows.  As soon as I opened the car door and the dome light didn’t come on I knew what happened.  Lily made me leave the key in the ignition in the on position all day long and killed the battery.

Bad dog.

Anti-Gravity batteryEnter the Micro-Start Mini XP-5 from Antigravity Batteries.  I bought one of these to keep with the Vespa so if I’m on the road and my battery dies I can just jump start the scooter.  It’s about the size of my iPhone, comes with a nice little case that includes jumper cables and a variety phone and mobile device charger cords.  For $99 I thought it was a good investment.

With a dead Honda Fit in the driveway I had a couple choices — move a lot of stuff around so I could get the van in a place where I could jump the Fit, or try out the Mini XP-5.

Took but a few seconds to plug the short jumper cables into the battery, connect it to the Fit, and turn the key.  The car started right up.

Lily’s not a bad dog afterall.

This is the smallest battery made by Antigravity Batteries but it will jump start engines up to 1600ccs.  The slightly larger ones will start a V8 engine a dozen times.  Or recharge an iPad that many times.  It’s a pretty cool piece of technology to have available should you need power.

I got mine from Revzilla.com.