Scooter in the Sticks

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

Riding Enlightenment

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Vespa GTS scooter on rural road on a sunny day.
A perfect morning for a ride. Cool air, fluffy clouds, and rain that would hold until later in the day.

Sunny Morning Enlightenment

Every ride is different. If they weren’t, I would have lost interest in riding a long time ago. My attention can’t be held by the machine I ride. It’s just a tool necessary in being a rider. In the pantheon of cosmic questions, albeit a minor one, is “Why do I ride?”. The answer isn’t important but it has fueled some mental gymnastics on my identity as a rider. On this day I experience a little riding enlightenment.

Scooter rider? Vespa rider? While enjoying a morning ride I realized there’s a difference between someone who identifies with a particular riding machine and someone who’s a rider.

I’m a rider. I just happen to ride a Vespa scooter.

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The Five Senses

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Vespa GTS scooter parked along a rural road.
My Vespa GTS scooter as part of a painter’s landscape.

Morning Glow

I’m pretty sure of the five senses, sight exerts the most power in my life. It accounts for the lifelong fascination with photography and catalogs the bulk of my memories. When I grow antsy at home, the phrase most likely to pass my lips is, “I need to get out and see something.”

Stopped along a road that wound past a local farm I wished I knew how to paint. The light was at once soft yet bright, and the color of grass, soil and sky glowed. When I ride, I enjoy seeing things.

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Choose Your Own Way

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Vespa scooter on a gray day.
A pause during a ride on a gray morning in a lush world. So much rain lately. No matter how you might feel, you can choose your own way to thing about it.

A Gray World

Yesterday morning, just before venturing out on the Vespa into a gray world, I came across a quote by Viktor Frankl.

“The last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way.”

The words stuck with me as I pushed the scooter into the driveway.

Choose your own way.

Something was bothering me. Might have been a conversation earlier in the week with Kim’s neurosurgeon, or perhaps puzzling over investment in an index fund or something more aggressive. It may have simply been the threat of rain when I wanted to ride. The idea that I could choose my attitude as I prepared to ride wouldn’t have occurred to me had I not read Frankl’s words.

By the time I was on the road things had changed. Riding didn’t change me but it did open a door, permitted a mental transformation from being awash in anxiety to sailing in a sea of gratitude. It may have been a fake, false, contrived idea in my head, but after a few miles on the Vespa, I was a different man.

I felt the familiar lust for life.

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Cruel Thing War

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Vespa GTS scooter parked along a street
Parked along the street after a short morning ride into State College, Pennsylvania.

Thoughts on a Quiet Morning

Memorial Day may come but once a year, but the sadness of loss of those who sacrificed in the wars and battles of this nation lingers. A short ride into town provided some quiet space to think about how the difficult history of the day is often forgotten as the holiday becomes consumed with celebration and distraction.

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Lust for Life

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Vespa GTS scooter along a stream
Vespa GTS scooter parked along Spring Creek in central Pennsylvania. The creek is a famed trout stream.

Spring Creek

It’s hard to know while pushing the scooter out of the garage what kind of ride it will be. Some miles from home, standing alone along the cool waters of Spring Creek, I’m content to be an observer, a wanderer, going nowhere but somewhere. Deep inside a lust for life is emerging. What’s important and energizing is becoming clear.

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