Scooter in the Sticks

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

Video: Maintenance, Helmets and Riding A Vespa Scooter in the Pandemic

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Riding the Vespa scooter around the neighborhood after changing the engine and transmission oil to make sure there were no leaks. Any excuse to ride.

Another VLOG Entry

Only four entries into my ten video target to determine if making videos has any utility in my blogging life and I’m behind schedule. My plan was to post every other Monday.

This entry is a quick update on the status of things in my world and a continuing experiment with cameras and microphones as I search for the idea blogging setup for me.

If you like these entries let me know and subscribe in YouTube. I’m not sure why at this point though someone told me it’s important. As I understand it, if I get a million subscribers I can make some money. I think I have to take some of my clothes off though to achieve that number.

Stay safe on the road and in your dealings with the strange new world we’re traveling through now.

A quick update on the moto and pandemic happenings in my little world.

Reminder: Be Safe on Your Scooter or Motorcycle

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Accepting Risk While Riding a Scooter or Motorcycle

I’ve posted this video titled “Morning Fall” by Edward McGinty before as a reminder as the spring riding season (pandemic allowing) gets underway. It’s always seemed prudent to me to be honest about the realities of the road and the risk I’m willing to assume. What made sense last month, last year or decades ago may have no bearing on reality today. What matters now is to be safe on your scooter or motorcycle.

Every time I watch this video I’m reminder of aspects of riding I hold important — helmets and protective clothing, boots, gloves, and the haunting specter of deer on the highway. And I’m also reminded of the strategies I employ to make the most of the risks I take on.

As a video, this piece is well-produced and delivers an unexpected turn at the end. I hope you find some utility in watching.

https://vimeo.com/bossboyd/morningfall
“Morning Fall”
Cast: Zia Harris
Written & Directed by: Edward McGinty
Produced by: Suzi Yoonessi & Ben Odell
Director of Photography: Adam Silver

Be smart and be safe as you embark on your spring rides. If you’re like me you’re itching to take advantage of the restorative powers riding can bring to the table.

And if you have parked your machines until stay-at-home orders expire or you just feel comfortable on the road again during this COVID-19 pandemic, let’s all hope we can ride again soon, safe from a virus, and with the best skills and strategies to return home in one piece.

Video: Dreaming of Riding a Vespa Scooter

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Vespa GTS 250ie in the woods.
Robbed of riding by the COVID-19 pandemic, I reach for dreams of riding.

Riding a Vespa Scooter

It’s been almost a month since I’ve been riding — either the Vespa scooter or the motorcycle. I stopped for sound reasons but I have to admit the world feels a lot smaller right now. And despite the rosy rhetoric about opening up the country again, I have little faith that it will make much sense for someone like me for months to come.

I hope I’m wrong.

In the meantime I’ve been remembering and imagining rides gone by. And dreaming of rides to come. It’s a strange place to be when something so common and familiar is suddenly gone.

I’ve made another VLOG entry exploring the feelings surrounding riding a Vespa scooter. For me at least. It may be meaningless for someone else.

Video production remains an awkward dance between the equipment on hand to capture pictures and sound, the ancient computer on which I attempt to edit the video, and the ideas in my head that I struggle to give life to in the digital realm.

Here is VLOG #3.

My third attempt at a video entry. I’m struggling technically, especially with audio. But I hope I have some small measure of success in sharing a little of the thoughts, feelings and dreams of riding a Vespa scooter.

Thank You to Poet Susan Mitchell

The opening line of the video, “In my dreams, the ride goes on forever” was inspired by a poem by Susan Mitchell titled, “The Road.” In that work, she writes, “In the car’s dream, the road goes on forever”. From the moment I first read that poem that line has echoed in my mind. It was before I started to ride and has only grown more intense with each passing mile.

Thank you, Susan Mitchell. And to my wife Kim for sharing that poem with me. That gesture and others have helped move me away from being an educated barbarian…

Video Blogging

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Blame David Masse.

Masse is the author of Life on Two Wheels, part online journal, part riding blog with a dash of life observations to put it all in context.  David is one of the rider/bloggers I follow and is completely to blame for this post.  His most recent observation, among other things, discussed his interest in entering the video blogging arena, something I’ve been tinkering at with little luck or output for nearly ten years.  So his post has me thinking again, especially with only 154 days left until I retire, about how I might integrate video into Scooter in the Sticks.

Producing videos, at least for me, is nothing like a post with images and text.  Video requires far more planning to produce, and you need to know what you want to say before you start.  My blog posts often come to life as I’m typing or looking at the photographs I happen to have made.  The reason I haven’t posted much in the way of video is perhaps I don’t have anything to say.   Looking back at my first video it sort of started and stopped with, “I ride my scooter through a rural landscape.”  And that was it.

The First Scooter in the Sticks Video — Circa 2006.

Music and images; simple, safe and relatively easy to produce by myself (a lot of setting up the camera (Canon S90) on a tripod and then riding through the scene).  But safe in terms of not putting myself out there with something to say.  It’s easy to write a narrative.  A completely different challenge to speak.  Especially to a video camera.  I’ve tried many times to create riding related video blogs.

And nothing.

Back in 2006 I posted a video I made in graduate school — confessional, direct to camera, something I thought could be a model for future video blog posts — my thoughts about the Vespa, the landscape, whatever.  Here’s that video on memory…

A Video about Memory — 2005

This video is perhaps more like my blog posts than the first one, but the conception, planning and production time is daunting.  It appeared originally in a post titled Riding and Memory.

I’ve floundered around for years trying to figure out a way to quickly make riding videos with some meaning beyond talking while I ride along with a GoPro camera leading the way.

David Masse’s post has tweaked this creative splinter causing me to lurch a bit at the thought of video blogging.

Not sure if I’ll find a way to create some meaningful content using video but my search has reawakened…

Thanks David.

Scooter for Everyday Living

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If you have doubts about the utility of a scooter for everyday living I think this video will change how you think about them.  It’s a look back at scooters in the early 1960s in Great Britain.

After watching the video I was surprised at the size and scope of the scooter culture that had developed and wondered about the barriers for a similar embrace of a scooter for everyday living in the United States.  Low fuel prices coupled with a general tendency for people to want bigger, more powerful machines and it’s easy to understand why we don’t see more scooters.