Scooter in the Sticks

Exploring life on a Vespa, Royal Enfield Himalayan, Honda Trail 125, and a Kawasaki W650

Too Nice Not to Ride

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Spring morning rides on the Vespa are electrifying.  A visual candy store of light and texture offers an available camera moments of photographic relaxation — images captured to reignite memories later.

Scooters have emerged from garaged cocoons as riding butterflies — simple, quiet, elegant machines of transport and joy.  Or so I see them.  Here as the sun neared the evening horizon I stood wondering who belonged to the other Vespas.

Ephemeral spring blossoms demonstrate the speed in which time passes. Organic reminders of the constant flow of life and the cycle of change. I don’t think of these things often — at times with a camera, on the scooter, or scratching out words on a page in my journal.

It’s been too nice not to ride at all so I make the most of rides to work and short errands around town. Feeling the Vespa respond to the throttle, the air rushing through my helmet, the world flowing by in a visual river of light and color — I can feel my heart beat and the thrill of being alive and in front of it all.

Yes, it’s too nice not to ride.

First Things First

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Last week thick with riding temptation.  Soaring temperatures, greening landscape, a rapid departure from winter.  I made this picture on the way home from work and recognizing the lengthening days and expanding windows to ride.  But first things first.

My Vespa is filthy and coated with the grime and grit of winter.  A responsible rider would tend to his machinery and perform all reasonable and required maintenance.  At least give the thing a bath.

Time for the Heidenau Snow Tex tires to come off as well.  No sense in wearing the soft, sticky, expensive rubber compound away on warm, dry roads.  The exhaust system should come off as well, be sandblasted and repainted.  And a few more mechanical feats should be undertaken.  First things first.

Our naturalized, woodland garden is coming to life and with it a wide array of trimming, transplanting, raking and digging.  I made a decision to do this work before any serious spring time rides.  And the house calls out for its share of attention as well.  First things first.

Junior the jungle dog peeks through the bamboo grove in our garden.  This running form of bamboo, Phyllostachys  aureosulcata, needs a close eye to keep it from taking over the world.  Spring time means some exploration with a shovel and removal of the aggressive runners.

And there is a lot more work to do.  So before any major Vespa adventures I need to tend to first things first…

$5.24

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$5.24.  That’s what I paid this morning to fill up the Vespa after 78 miles of back and forth to work — $4.159 per gallon for 1.259 gallons or premium fuel.  Stops at the gas pump can be satisfying experiences.

Tapping on my iPhone calculator (I’ve ceased doing math in my head) reveals fuel consumption at 62mpg.  That’s in the normal range for rides to work.  Slightly higher on trips.

A light rain was falling but the air was almost warm making for a pleasant ride.  Cost of that kind of ride — priceless…

Riding: Other Ways Home

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I know, without a doubt, that my life would be more ordinary if my movement through the world was limited to the comfortable confines of a car.  A satisfied grin marked my face as I scrambled around in the gravel along a line of dumpsters. Looking out beyond the Vespa towards Tussey Ridge, sitting on the ground, I was happy.

When was the last time you sat on the ground by yourself?

At 57 years old I’m still curious and get excited by strange things I see. And maybe more excited that I actually see things.  And concerns for appearances and behavior are mostly in the past leaving me free to roll around on the ground in a yellow and black riding suit to take a picture regardless of who might see me.

Riding the Vespa changes things.  Changes what I see and do.  And for the better.  In a car, the commute to and from work is painfully ordinary, a trip from A to B on the shortest route, radio playing, mind wandering, arriving at a destination startled and wondering how I got there.

It’s almost never that way on the Vespa.  I always know what happened. While riding I’m a man in full possession of my senses of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste.  It’s good.  Life’s richer on a Vespa.

Even amidst a village of dumpsters.

The Senses of Riding

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A dog may not reflect a connection to riding to the casual observer, the connoisseur of mechanical marvel, or the unwashed masses who see riders as fools with a death wishes as they talk on their cellphones.  My dog Junior, like my Vespa, bring me into the world, cause me to move forward, at this time of year through resistance and doubt only to emerge at the other end of a trip with a profound sense of satisfaction.  Like a dog, eyes, ears, nose, they’re all turned on, alert and scanning the world.

The Vespa almost always comes after the dog.  Biology trumps engineering.

A ride to work, on an errand, or just an unplanned and aimless trip to no where in particular is much like he morning walk — senses attuned to the world, sights to see, and that feeling of motion, flying in this instance, but motion both figuratively and literally.  It’s a potent medicine.

And always there’s arrivals.  A place, a sight, a location.  In cold weather I relish in an almost unnatural way the heat and steam of a cup of tea as no other drink has ever provoked.  And again, the senses are focused keen like a sharp knife on every sound and motion, sight and smell.  All lost on the non-rider?  How would I know?

There are the grand sights and the small ones.  When riding to work or on little journies from one task to the next a person takes things as they come.  Standing at a coffee shop counter I spy the tulips across the room in the window.  I’m certain, had I arrived in the van, my mind would be elsewhere and I’d never have seen them.

Thank you ride.