Scooter in the Sticks

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

50 degrees, Apples, and the Coming of Winter

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Let me be the first to raise the alarm. Winter is coming. The air, the light, the chill that cut through me brought the horizon into view and it was winter. The Big Dipper was as bright and clear in the night sky as I can remember and I knew it would be cold in the morning. Sleeping in the cold air is great and to just make the night perfect Kim and I were awakened in the middle of the night by a Screech Owl’s whinny.

At 50° I have to protect myself, especially my hands so out came the windproof jacket worn underneath my First Gear Kilimanjaro IV riding jacket. And the heavy winter gloves, just one stop away from the mittens. I hate being cold but I love to ride so I bundle up.

The light was intense as I stopped to look at the play of shadow, light and color in a group of pine trees. It is the kind of light that appears with the onset of fall and signals winter. I’m grinning as I write this. I love the challenge of colder weather.

Apples. I’m really wandering away from riding now. A Honeycrisp apple to be precise. I was at the Cellar Market at Penn State, a small fruit, flower and vegetable market that sells produce grown on the many Penn State Research Farms.

This Honeycrisp is fresh and its good. A student was running a taste test with five apple varieties. I recognized four of them but had never heard of the Honeycrisp apple. One bite and I was transported back to 1965 sitting in a neighbor’s apple tree with three or four of my friends. Every self-respecting 11 year old carried a pocket knife so we were all busy slicing and eating apples, two-legged locusts moving from tree to tree. But I digress.

A bite of that Honeycrisp was EXACTLY the apple taste I remembered. It was incredible. The label for those apples read “explosively crisp”. Sweet-tart, juicy, and they were explosively crisp. I bought the last two they had. The other crates still had lots of apples. And I sort of turned into a Honeycrisp evangelist. The day was exceptional because I had an exceptional apple. And we are entering apple season in Pennsylvania so there will be a lot of fresh apples.

Small Reminders in the Rain

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Rain was falling and the driveway was covered with leaves when I pushed the Vespa out of the garage. A signal that fall is on the way. Mist shrouded Mount Nittany in the distance and I could not resist a riding a slightly longer route to work. The valley was lush and crops of corn and soybeans near harvest—more reminders of the impending change in season.

On mornings like this a few minutes alone along the road looking around changes the way I see things. Not just the landscape in front of me. It changes the way the day unfolds. I’m able to stay attuned to the small reminders the world throws my way. Later at work while scouting in a production plant I shuddered as I walked through 30 below zero air flowing from the open overhead door of a storage freezer. My mind took me to some of the coldest rides I’ve made, days that grow closer everyday.

For me the prime riding season is just beginning. Colder air, more dramatic color and light, and a sharpening of the senses dulled by the heat of summer. Patterns and textures emerge in the landscape that always seem hidden to me in hot weather. The rain stopped and it was time to move on to work even though I wanted to stay and watch the clouds clear along the ridge.

Sacred Ground

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This past Saturday I decided to ride back to Pittsburgh to visit the places where I grew up and dust off memories. Over 300 miles but the time I returned home. I was on the road at 5:30 AM in order to make the most of the day. The first couple hours the temperature never exceeded 54° F and twice dropped to 48° in some low wooded places. I thought I dressed warm enough but again missed the mark and should have worn my winter riding jacket. I just hate taking it knowing the thermometer will reach 80° later in the day.

I made a stop at a Sheetz convenience store to warm up a bit. While standing outside sipping hot chocolate I struck up a conversation with a man interested in the Vespa. He’s in his mid 70’s and tells me he just bought a Honda Rebel, downsizing because of recent double knee replacement surgery. He wanted to keep riding though. I was glad I ran into him and it was good to hear the riding spirit can weather medical and aging challenges.

Warmed a bit I wanted to get to Pittsburgh as quickly and directly as possible rather than my usually wandering routes. US 22 was the quickest path to the city and four-lane highway the whole way. The Vespa GTS 250 easily moved along at 60 to 70 MPH the whole way until exiting into Pittsburgh. I never felt an obstacle to traffic or unsafe. Without a windscreen you feel the trip as the wind hits you square in the chest. I like the reminder that I’m moving.

The Pittsburgh skyline has changed a lot since I grew up in the area. The blast furnaces that used to frame the eastward approach are gone. I rode through the city on surface streets but I wasn’t too interested in spending much time there. I wanted to ride on to Neville Island, the place I grew up.

Neville Island is five miles long and less than a half mile wide. When I lived there we had our own school, fire and police departments, stores, and industry. Lots of industry employing tens of thousands of workers. Three quarters of the island was industrial — blast furnaces, coke ovens, foundries, chemical plants, trucking depots, oil and gas farms, galvanizing plants, steel fabrication, and shipyards.

Crossing over onto the island I was greeted by the smell of chemicals, gas and other industry flavors. I remembered that smell from 44 years ago. I stopped to look down Grand Avenue, a four-lane road with a 35 MPH speed limit that looked exactly the same.

Looking around the blast furnaces are gone and the once well worn through use workspaces now appeared closer to neglect and indifference. Where once everything was alive with activity now seemed quiet. For me only ghosts and memories.

I stopped at the site of the old Shenango Foundry where my father worked for over 30 years as a millwright. Standing at the gate I remembered bringing him dinner with my mother when he worked a double shift.

He would come out to the road with his face black with soot and dirt. This place was a foundry then producing ingot molds for the steel industry. I would look off into the buildings and see the orange glow and smoke of steel being poured from ladle cars brought down by train from the blast furnaces at the end of the island. It was a magical place to me as a kid. I never set foot inside. The foundry has long been closed and all that’s left are shadows. Men spent their lives here in hard labor for good wages. I see something different than the camera when I look at the place.

Just down the road is the Dravo Shipyard where I worker as a welder over 30 years ago building river barges and towboats. During World War II the company produced destroyer escorts and ships to land tanks.

When I worked there the yard worked three shifts seven days a week. Thousands were employed here. Looking out across the yard for a moment I catch a glimpse of the place as it was before it fades in the bright sun. So many lives played out here. Some were lost here. Contributions to a better world are just gone. It feels like sacred ground to me.

Along the river just on the other side of the shipyard is the Neville School. It’s smaller than I remember. Our community had its own kindergarten through 12th grade school. And a football team— the Neville Rivermen. The bus that brought us to school in the morning would take us home for lunch. That’s how small the place was. The decline in industry changed everything here. All along the river would be barges tied up waiting to move up and down the river.

There are still barges there though these may not move again. Trees growing in them don’t bode well for their future. I may have helped build one of these Dravo barges.

The house I grew up in was a mile down the road on Idaho Street. The same concrete street running to the riverbank was there. The same tar seams I used to sit next to on hot days and poke tar bubbles were there.

We lived in this tiny Gunnison home built by United States Steel in 1950. A two-bedroom house built on a 24×30 concrete slab. I knocked on the door and found the man my father sold the house to in 1963. He invited me in to look around and I couldn’t believe how tiny it was. Back then to my kid eyes it was spacious.

The barbeque my father built in the backyard was still there like an anonymous monument to him. Standing there everything seemed small and far away and I just wanted to go home.

The GTS performed flawlessly all day and the trip provided me with an opportunity to push the envelop in city and freeway riding at longer than normal distances. By the time I got home I had put 320 miles on the scooter in 11 hours. Running through Pittsburgh on the parkway towards home gave me a chance to assess how the Vespa did among aggressive drivers. It had more than enough power to travel along in the mess and I was surprised how well the suspension absorbed the sudden potholes without complaint. By the time I entered the Squirrel Hill Tunnel I felt as if I had graduated to neophyte urban rider.

Going through the tunnel at 60 MPH with one hand on the throttle and the other on the shutter button probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do. As punishment for that forward progress ground to a crawl on the other side of the tunnel.

I was started to feel a little tired but still had another 130 miles to go so I fell into line with traffic not stopping until I had left the city far behind.

I had to stretch my back and backside for a few minutes and it was a relief to find a quiet place near the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic site.

The remainder of the ride was uneventful save for the growing discomfort in my backside. I felt as if 11 or 12 hours of riding in a day would be about my limit. Any lingering concerns about the touring capabilities of the Vespa GTS 250ie dissolved with this trip. It’s not the machine for everyone but it shouldn’t be pigeonholed as an around town errand runner either. It can handle long distances in its own way. It’s really up to the rider to decide what he or she is after.

First Signs of Fall

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The days are already noticeably shorter and the corn is tall and ready to turn. The first signs of Fall are subtle, a few leaves turn color early, field crops ready themselves for harvest, apples get ready to pick, and around here signs of Penn State Football become apparent.

Riding through some back roads the other day I found another sign of Fall that could have multiple meanings. Literally. The hickory nuts (I think) that have begun to fall off the trees here.

In addition to giving the squirrels an opportunity to hoard for the winter they give the less attentive rider an opportunity to fall. Rounding a bend I came across about twenty feet of these hard round nuts that masquerade as marbles and give the Vespa tires fits. They are hard and keep the tire up and off the ground doing wonders for traction. These seasonal drops (nuts not riders) are common when roads run under hickory, walnut, and oaks loaded with acorns. One more innocent little natural hazard to add to the mental library along with manure drops, wet leaves, whitetail deer, groundhogs, springs, birds and bears.

Life in the sticks has its own unique set of riding requirements.

Fog Sweet Fog

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It was purely a coincidence when I read Gary Charpentier’s post on Rush Hour Rambling referencing the differences between my fog and his fog just minutes before departing to ride in some of that charming atmospheric effect. And I can’t agree more with the fog differential between us.

I took the day off and when I saw fog on Tussey Mountain I figured it would be a good day to explore the forest roads in Rothrock State Forest. All gravel and dirt but I’m much more adept with the scooter on these surfaces now and besides—there was fog!

Before going further I have to express how different it is to ride in the fog here versus what Gary has to deal with. While I have to pay close attention to the road the shear lack of volume of other vehicles where I ride creates a completely different environment. I saw one other vehicle the entire time I was in the fog. One. I suspect Gary came near to thousands on his commute to work. In my mind heavy fog with heavy traffic is right up there with snowstorms. He is “One rugged sumbitch!.

Riding towards the mountain I could see clouds shrouding the upper two-thirds promising some magical scenery. Starting up the road to Little Flat takes me through a tunnel of trees all the way to the top of the ridge.

The fog becomes heavier as I cross over the ridge and up the next one on Bear Gap Road. The trees are even closer to the edge of the road and the sides of the road are much steeper and rock covered.

While most of the rocks are limestone there are occasional outcroppings of white sandstone that glow in the fog. About this time I notice I am dripping wet in part because of the fog but mostly I think because it is hot outside even at 7 AM. And it just got worse as the day went on though being a smart man I spent it at home in air-conditioned comfort with a good book. But I digress…

I stopped a lot to look at things, probably even more times than I normally do because of the fog and what it does to a place. I suspect on a sunny morning I would never have noticed the spider web on these thistles.

Riding further I come to the edge of one of the many wilderness areas in Pennsylvania and a place that is especially rich for reptiles and amphibians—read that rattlesnakes and turtles.

While padding around a bit I noticed a red newt crossing the road. Again, something you won’t see riding or driving. The drogue I call a camera affords many special views.

My stomach got the better of me and caused the Vespa to turn towards home even as the fog seemed to get heavier. I could not help but think of the battle Gary has to endure to travel on two-wheels through this stuff. There is no rambling in that kind of environment. Fog is what the place makes of it. It’s dumb luck I find myself where I am.