Exploring life on a Vespa Scooter and Royal Enfield Himalayan motorcycle.
Another week has passed and I managed to shoot two more rolls and make prints. It is becoming easier to get myself into the darkroom and exposing the film is becoming more transparent in my life. It definitely helps that I carry my Leica M6 with me everywhere.
Here are the pictures…
Early last Sunday morning at local cafe
Kim in parking lot
Farm along long route to work
Darkness and the thermometer indicated 6 degrees when I got out of bed. It requires great effort to leave the house; on foot, by car, or on the Vespa. Once the sun comes out it’s another matter entirely.
Preparing for cold rides takes more time, more layers of clothes, heavier gear, wires for the electric gloves. I feel like a knight preparing for battle except I don’t have a squire to care for the Vespa. The routine mechanical check revealed low tire pressure front and back. Just what I wanted to fiddle with in an unheated garage only marginally warmer than the air outside. I dutifully checked everything, pushed the scooter into the driveway and hit the starter button. Even at 11 degrees the GTS starts right up. No battery tender needed yet.
The Gerbing electric gloves work great at this temperature and aside from the shear bulk of my riding gear everything else keeps me warm and insulated from the icy cold air. Everything but the helmet vent I neglected to close that allowed a little knife if frigid air to torture my left eye.
With the Vespa parked in it’s space at work the bright sun makes everything seem tolerable. Looking at the picture I hardly see anything cold. No matter how cold it is I’m fine if the sun is out. Like one New Year’s Day hike long ago when I fell through the ice at Bear Meadows. Sun was out so I hiked another 8 hours after I got out of the water.
The Vespa provides basic transportation. With some extra gear it allows me to use it year round, even for an 11-degree commute to work. The ride home was much warmer with temperatures soaring to near 30 degrees.
I stopped on the way home to photograph glowing orange corn stubble in the snow. I see a lot of things while I ride that I would like to make a picture of but I do want to go home.
Turning around and walking back towards the scooter I couldn’t resist making one last picture as the sun neared the horizon. It still gets dark too soon and I look forward to longer and warmer days. Until then I’ll have to keep preparing as if I were going out on a moonwalk I suppose. Not very stylish but very effective.
That is the question.
One that goes beyond any momentary consideration of weather. It’s a question of time and choices. Riding for riding’s sake and not for transportation. Transportation is a simple question to answer and so is the weather. What I’m talking about is making a choice to ride when I have nowhere to go. When the choice to ride means I won’t be raking leaves or paying bills. Time spent with friends or family will give way to time on the road. That choice is more difficult.
This past weekend was perfect riding weather. Gray skies, cool air, and no one on the road. And I had a ton of work to do. More than normal and the days pass quickly. I feel the clock. I make the choice to ride though I don’t know if it’s the right one.
It’s easy to say I need to ride to stay sane but I know that’s not true. If I never rode again I would retain my grip on reality. I also know that riding has changed me. For the better and that’s something that’s hard to dismiss. But still I’m left with much responsibility and a fixed amount of time.
The ride was short, sixty miles with a stop for breakfast. The temperature hovered around 50 degrees and the skies remained heavy with cloud cover. Farmers were cutting corn and spills of the hard yellow stuff were evident on and along the roads, another road surface hazard that could surprise the unwary rider on dry roads.
Stopping by a small lake in Pennsylvania Furnace Paul offered to leap through another picture. Looking at it now I see myself responding to the question of riding.
The trip to and from work today was slow and deliberate. Random patches of ice in the morning and patches of gravel this afternoon required careful attention. And adequate attention translates in speeds below normal.
E.B. White’s quote used in the title of this post reaches beyond the obvious. It means more that the resultant slow speeds at which I rode to safely manage hazards on the road surface. White suggests a necessity of deliberation for anyone engaged in a search. Moving, acting, and living slower is not the default mode of popular culture or the majority of the riding community. Traveling from point A to point B as fast or packed with as many mini-experiences as possible often is the travel mode of choice. Motorcycles and scooters capable of triple digit speeds are not conducive for 25 MPH meandering. Each of us makes our own choices and riding is no exception.
My ride today reminded me of how much I am looking for — inside and out. I stopped on the way home to look at the snow covered corn stubble reaching across the valley I call home. I’m looking for something I can’t describe or explain. While there a bicyclist stopped to ask if I saw a bear. Each of us was obviously looking for something different.
I’m fortunate to have open roads so near to home in spite of growing development pressure. The road above is typical of many of the secondary roads that loop through the countryside.
I wasn’t sure this morning if I would ride to work. Temperatures hovered near freezing insuring there would be some icy patches would remain. I’m glad I did ride because it provided a chance to look at the morning sky. I’m still not sure why but I never look carefully while driving or riding the bus. I just get plugged into the fast lane.
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Committing to a photography project is difficult. Mental gymnastics intended to clarify and focus a direction generally leave me thinking that every photograph has been made and adding to the sum total of human expression is a pointless exercise. Every mundane chore or diversion looms larger and the camera sits quietly in the dark. My brain really makes it difficult to start.
The images I make of the Vespa while riding are easy. The rides are fun and I like the way the scooter looks. I can pull the digital camera out of my pocket and in a few seconds I’m done. What I’m talking about now is a body of work related to the scooter only because the scooter may be transporting me to the location in which I would photograph. The Vespa is not a subject. Perhaps the ride is the subject. The photograph above was made during the last ride of my LX150 shortly before permanent mechanical failure. It is the sort of image I might make as part of this project. Whatever the subject is what is clear is that I have not been able to sustain action or production. I do a lot of thinking. Thinking is good, just not for photography, at least not for me.
During a phone conversation last weekend my friend Gordon, also a photographer, suggested we get together periodically to help each other along through doubt and motivation, to prod through support or shame the production of new work. Friend Paul was added to the group and Kim took part in our first meeting on Monday night.
I’ll share my part in this. I agreed to shoot two rolls of film, process, contact and make two work prints to show when we meet every two weeks.
A quick calculation in my head shows one hour to process the film and two hours to make the contact sheets and prints. I can’t estimate the photography time. The above contact sheet shows images made during the last ride of the LX150.
I need a carrot but more often I need a stick directed at me to get me moving. Thinking about photography doesn’t get me any farther than thinking about riding does. In each case I need to just get in motion. Things only happen when I am engaged in the process. I’m hoping that combining the camera with the Vespa will make something happen. I have faith in things happening when I am in motion. I’ve decided to share this journey in Scooter in the Sticks. I’ll allow you to see the process and the rough results as I haul my camera around. If I am really lucky I’ll feel guilty not keeping up with my photo production goals. So look for some black and white photos to appear at least every two weeks. Give me hell if I drop the ball.