Scooter in the Sticks

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

The Return of the Vespa

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It felt like I getting in a clown car. The tiny scooter. I could hardly believe I was thinking that when I got back on the Vespa minutes after returning a Kawasaki KLR 650. The nature of the KLR kept my shoulders spread and my legs extended more fully while riding. The close, compact riding position of the GTS seemed almost shocking and a rush of thoughts appeared in my head that scooter riding was finished, spoiled by the recent riding of motorcycles. For a few moment scooter innocence and simplicity abandoned me as I rode towards home.

It didn’t take long to find my place on the Vespa. A few rides to work, a few errands and the he earnest utility of the scooter becomes apparent. By Thursday morning I was back in the groove as I headed south of town towards Rock Springs.

Still can’t pass up an interesting path. A photographic treasure could lurk that way. With corn over eight feet tall there are a lot of mysterious farm lanes around. The scooter readily runs along the gravel lanes at slow, explorer speeds. I sacrifice a few extra minutes to check around a few bends in the corn.

Another quick stop at Gate D of the Penn State Ag Research Center to survey the for for pictures. It had become a uniform grey with little subject matter to give the fog any personality. Disappointed I ride on towards my morning work assignment.

Ag Progress Days begin next week and 40-50 thousand people will arrive to check out the latest agricultural innovations in machines, management, livestock and more. I’ve ridden out to help set lights for one of the exhibit buildings. A day of physical labor will remind me of the current status of my body.

I admire how you can get away with far more parking options with a scooter than you can with a motorcycle. I see them around town parked in little places behind utility poles, odd spaces in parking lots, next to bike racks, etc. One definite advantage of the smaller scooters. My Vespa GTS250 is right on the edge of being too big to play invisible.

The Vespa has returned to my riding life and the clown car has reappeared as a real machine capable of real travel. And it delivers more fun than I have a right to expect. If my scooter had a name I think I would owe it an apology…

A State of Mind

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On the way home from work I was doing a bit of musing as I wandered around a farm field with my camera and was thinking about how I often come to be in places like this.

Dan Bateman, author of Musings of an Intrepid Commuter, recently wrote about the state of mind that riding can put you in – one decidedly different than that sitting behind the wheel of an automobile. I revisited the two paragraphs below a number of times. What Dan wrote soundly struck a chord and neatly sums up the magic of riding for me.

There’s something about riding a motorcycle that puts us into a different state of mind than cagers. Sometimes that’s bad. We’re more likely to find ways to get into trouble, you know! On the other hand, or maybe just the other side of the same hand, I find myself so much more open to the world around me. I see more, feel more, and thus experience more, than when in a car. I find myself so much more willing to wander off the beaten path. The age old question. What’s down there? Let’s go find out. I’m not so likely to bother with it in a car or my truck. On a bike, in vivid contrast, I’m ready for adventure at a moment’s notice.

I think most people who ride experience the same thing. Using a bike for regular transportation amplifies the effect. I spend a lot of time on a bike. So I also spend a lot of time in an open and inquisitive state of mind. It’s become a regular trait of mine. Riding is a Zen-like journey. There’s so much personal growth that comes as a result of, but not directly tied to, riding. Thus my journey Monday evening.

Musings of an Intrepid Commuter, April 9, 2009

Riding strips away a lot of the noise that builds through the day and can open the door to adventure. I’m not talking about the big, heroic rides across continents, but rather movement through a regular day, through the daily rituals of life. When I push the Vespa back onto its center stand it is almost always to look around. At nothing and everything. I feel the same way I did when I was a kid and everything seemed new and treasure is everywhere. I’m fortunate that I can ride regularly and enter this state of mind.

Dan talks about how a motorcycle makes him more willing to wander off the beaten path. I have to agree. I seldom wheel my Ford Ranger off the beaten path. The enclosed comfort in a modern vehicle makes those turns ponderous and difficult. Or more often just unimportant. I don’t often feel like a kid in my truck. I know it can be done because I used to prowl the Central Pennsylvania landscape in a truck with my view camera in tow. I would move slowly, just as I do on the scooter, and travel down every unmarked path searching for photographic treasure. But it was never easy and I always had to push past the slothful comfort of padded seats and stereophonic music. The Vespa appears in these pictures without any need to push.
Riding to work the next morning was a repeat of the previous evening. Another path, another opportunity to breathe in the world. They aren’t dramatic rides but they are opportunities to be present, something that is more difficult to achieve amidst the noise of daily living. 
I’ve been here before but each time I stop it’s the first time I’ve been here.

A View into a Gray World

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Last Saturday morning I stepped outside into a gray world. Heavy clouds and remnants of a nighttime rain washed the color from the landscape leaving behind a quiet form of the world. This world requires less energy to embrace and is easier for me to process. It’s as if things have been distilled to their simplest forms and textures without all the noise and confusion that can appear in the color and shadows of postcard sunshine. The most ordinary places reveal their magic and a ride through familiar territory becomes new again. Moving along astride the Vespa in this world provides a special satisfaction.

On this morning my plan was a leisurely ride to breakfast in Bellefonte at the Café on the Park. A circuitous route would cover 20 miles and provide mostly empty roads and many opportunities to stop and look around. I’ve always felt riding was like flying. Not in a plane but if I could actually fly. The scooter exaggerates the effect because there is not much in front of your visual field to interfere with the fantasy like there is with a motorcycle. With earplugs stripping away most of the engine and wind noise it can be like a dream at times. A hyperfocus on the road that moves through an almost surreal landscape.

When I look at the Vespa through a wooded landscape I am reminded of how my wife Kim saw this first in her mind – what my riding would be like. How else could she have created my blog title, Scooter in the Sticks, without knowing?

If I have regrets on the road it is that I can’t keep riding. Pennsylvania has thousands of miles or rural roads that to me seem nothing short of spiritual pathways. For me. A place for slow and deliberate riding.

I’m often asked when I will get a motorcycle. I enjoy looking at motorcycles and find some of them enjoyable to ride. The Vespa GTS 250 strongly insists I make a choice. When I stopped beneath the underpass I was aware of the choice. Where did I want to live on the road? Did I want to slowly meander or eat up miles? The Vespa doesn’t preclude the high road but it does nudge me towards the slow one.

Just outside of Bellefonte I stopped to look at a cross at the corner of an old building. I assumed something bad happened here but could not imagine what. As I stood by the road with the camera the passing cyclists probably were wondering the same.

The Café on the Park. An unassuming place from the outside but unexpectedly elegant inside. These days I have to force myself to ride anywhere else when I am out for breakfast.

A pot of hot tea and my journal keep me occupied and involved in the ride. I have been participating in this kind of morning ritual (sans riding) since I was a teenager. One of the habits I haven’t had to give up.

Breakfast is always excellent. And I love getting fresh fruit. If I wasn’t so damn lazy I could have fresh fruit at home. But it seems overwhelming to slice things in the morning.

The ride home was different. I felt the pressure of the clock and the chores of the day. Riding onto Interstate 99 is a dramatic shift away from a slow ride. The Vespa can handle it. I can handle it. But I really wish I didn’t have to.

A Simple Elegance

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For me riding is both simple and elegant. Each aspect of the machine and the ride constructing a satisfying experience. It’s reflected in the simple construction of the picture I made the last time I stopped at Barnes and Noble. Every element essential but nothing extra. That’s what I pursue on my scooter in the sticks. It’s not a perfect path but one that generally leads me where I want to go.

Pizza is simple. Especially one that costs $5.. Nothing fancy after a hard day at work. Strap the thing to the back of the Vespa and go. But not until the manager runs out and warns me that all the cheese will run off at that angle.

It didn’t.

A last stop for crab cakes and salad hung simply on the purse hook. That’s right, it’s called a purse hook. I’ve not used it for that yet but it has carried a lot of other stuff. If simplicity is going to go out the window it’s often because of mental triggers like purse hook, Barbie scooter, moped rider, things like that. Or it should I guess. So far I’m impervious to that sort of positive critique.
I’m writing this just after dawn. It’s 54F and crying out for a ride. The weather is changing and spring is approaching. Last night on the way home I stopped to look at the light filtering through the trees. Something is different. The sun is moving. Or my attitude is changing through solar tempering. I’m waiting for my friend Paul to arrive to we can head north. Or east. Somewhere. Anywhere. It’s just good to get out for once when I don’t have to worry about frostbite.

Riding a Triumph, Riding a Vespa

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A minor aside: This is my 300th post. Who would have known I would be writing about a Triumph.

After two weeks on the road with the Triumph America I had to give it back. During that time I was able to stretch my motorcycle legs and strengthen my scooter resolve. If something is going to pry me away from the Vespa GTS 250ie it isn’t the America.

I won’t say there is anything wrong with it. There is no doubt that the Triumph attracts some attention from other riders who are either curious about or appreciate the British bike mystique. Or at least the ghost of those earlier machines still evident in the styling lines of these modern offspring. To the general public it’s just another motorcycle. No curious inquiries like I get with the Vespa.
Commuting and running errands on the Triumph was easy but I was missing some kind of locking storage, someplace to guard my potato chips, library book, or digital camera. I suspect some kind of luggage is available but I wonder what it would do to those classic lines.
The big tires do a real nice job of smoothing out the road but it is almost cancelled out by the shake and rumble of the engine.

The most noticeable cost of those big tires though is the sacrifice in nimbleness on the road. The Vespa just feels much more responsive. Nimble. Quick. And much easier to stop. But each machine has their own strengths and weaknesses and what may be important to me would be a negative to someone else. Each rider needs to draw their own conclusions when it comes to selecting what they want to ride.

It was hot and windy when I headed for Altoona and I was surprised how badly the America was pushed around in a heavy crosswind. I assumed the size and weight would keep it in a straight line. At 55 mph I was afraid the road wasn’t wide enough to not suddenly be riding in a cornfield so I veered off onto a more dawdling route and enjoyed the trip a lot more.
I stopped a few times along the road to take some pictures and you really have to watch the Triumph in the gravel. A dirt bike it is not. The mass of the machine makes any use of the front brake a touchy enterprise. I can see why a lot of riders don’t like taking these things down the forest roads around here.
I retrieved the Vespa and headed straight home. It felt tiny and I recalled driving our 1970 VW Campmobile where you sat out over the front wheels with nothing in front of you. Same thing with the Vespa. Nothing out in front of you but air. You don’t see the front wheel.

Welcome back to the shiftless world. The quiet world, the darting, quick, and nimble world. One stop in an alfalfa field reminded me that I was home again with an agile little scooter.

As much as I wanted to get home I kept seeing places to stop to look around and take some pictures. Places I would ride past on the Triumph. So for me the Vespa remains the right ride. But if I have the chance to ride some other things I’ll take them. I’m open to the idea that there are other quick and nimble rides that will make it easy to do what I do.