Scooter in the Sticks

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

The Black Sabbath Ride

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It rained on and off all day. From my office window I could see the sky change shades of gray. I find this kind of weather and light transforms what I see and how I feel. And it felt great to be riding without concern for snow or ice. As I rode home from work an old memory of a Black Sabbath album cover came to mind. I remember how fascinated I was with that picture.

I embrace the dim eeriness of the foggy dusk both as a rider and photographer. If I didn’t have things to do I would have stayed out longer. Instead another commute home from work.

Just Another Ride to Work

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In warm weather riding the Vespa to work is automatic. The only time I don’t is when I need to haul gear or people. In winter I make a quick assessment of road surface and mental state before making a decision. This past Thursday morning everything was aligned for scooter departure.

I chose a longer route to work to allow the battery to get a good charge. I don’t use a battery tender because so far my riding frequency seems to be sufficient. The recent addition of electric gloves has me wondering but so far so good. I suppose if the battery is going to die it will be 50 miles from home at 10º F.

Riding continues to create a hyper-awareness of my surroundings that is difficult to find while driving a car. I probably would not have seen the deer along the road while driving. I’m just cut off from the world by steel and glass. Looking at the deer I realized I don’t consciously watch for deer while riding. I watch for everything. Everything in front and back, left and right. Things come into focus in a continual processing of sensory information.

The ride to work was routine. The weather forecast called for snow showers late in the day but I assumed I would be home before they arrived. At 2:30 PM I saw the first snowflakes falling outside my office window. When I walked to the Vespa at 4:30 PM I found it covered in snow. The roads were still mostly wet with a bit of intermittent greasy slush.

Plans to travel across farm lanes when I realized that snow was accumulating too quickly to comfortably handle the steep grades in a few places. I wandered home on back roads and kept a careful eye on speed and road surface.

The local limestone quarry always looks good in the snow and I couldn’t resist stopping for a picture. The wet snow is surprisingly slick and I had to work a bit to get the scooter back onto the road even with all the gravel under the tires.

Various amounts of snow accumulated as can be seen in the curve in the above photograph. Easily negotiated but a potential disaster for a careless rider traveling too fast for conditions and assuming the road is merely wet.

I arrived home safely, brushed the snow and slush from the Vespa before parking it in the garage, and joined Kim for a cup of hot tea. Watching the snow out the front window warm and snug after just another ride home from work.

Wind and Weather

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“Nothing like a little wind to get the blood pumping and bring on the warm glow of “I’m alive!”.”

I posted that comment the other morning on Musings of an Intrepid Commuter before riding to work. At 5AM the wind was blowing hard while I wrote and I was worried more about one of our big spruce trees crashing through the window than I was about anything happening on the road. With gusts at 50 MPH that can push a Vespa around on the road.

By the time I pushed the scooter out of the garage prepared to brave the elements the sun had broken through the clouds and produced a wonderful double rainbow. And I could see both ends touching the horizon. The lens on my little point and shoot wasn’t wide enough though to capture the whole thing.

Half way to work the sky closed, wind started to blow hard and rain returned. I had to choose my lane position carefully depending on which direction the wind was coming from because it would knock me three feet without really trying. I didn’t want to be too close to somewhere I didn’t want to be when that happened. I just had to lean into the wind and bit to compensate and things were fine.

Almost as quickly as that happened the sky broke open again and the sun came out and the wind diminished a bit. In the sunshine it always seems less aggressive. I stopped to watch the clouds pass for a bit and then saw another ominous set of dark clouds approaching so I made a bee line to my office where I could watch the weather in comfort.

Just another day riding to work…

18º F and Gerbing Electric Gloves

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winter landscape seen during a Vespa rideEnduring Cold Weather

That’s what 18º F looks like to me on a cold ride to work. My wife Kim enhanced the image to help better reflect how cold I felt.

My friend Paul bought me a pair of Gerbing Mens Classic Electric Gloves for Christmas. Nice surprise. He probably was tired of my whining about cold hands and second guessing electrical assistance – so he figured he would just shut me up. Yesterday morning was the first day cold enough to give them a fair test with the thermometer hovering at 18° F.

I’ve heard electric gloves are cumbersome to use. Depending on your tolerance for detail and process there may be some truth in that statement. If you like slip-on shoes and pullover jackets you probably won’t like dealing with electric gloves. I’m used to getting on and off the Vespa quickly and the departure ritual is second nature. Acquiring electric gloves means I have to develop another ritual.
Gerbing heated glovesBurned Hands

Before going into the nuts and bolts I should comment on the most important issue – warmth – and a few lessons I have learned. I read a post on the Modern Vespa site where it was suggested that a thermostatic control was necessary lest you burn your hands. I like to rest my hands on our hot water radiators or park them in front of the heating vents in the car, nice and hot, so I was quite excited at the prospect of burning heat at my fingertips.

UPDATE: MARCH 6, 2016 — Lesson One ONLY applies if you are riding in cold weather (below 35F, and you have no wind protection for the gloves.  I found out recently that with hand grip mitts the gloves aren’t subject to the rapid cooling from the wind and I ended up with a small burn on my right hand.  The gloves are hot.  So I had to purchase a Gerbing Controller.  With that in mind read on.

LESSON ONE: The gloves aren’t going to burn you. I don’t know where someone would get the idea that you could burn yourself with these gloves. At 32° F the elements are supposed to heat to 130° F. And the elements are insulated from directed contact with skin so no burning is going to take place. Using them at 18 ° at 50 MPH you can barely tell they are heating. At sub-freezing temperatures I don’t want a thermostat, I want full power.

LESSON TWO: They do keep your hands warm. Or at least not cold. Like I said I like feeling heat. My hands remained comfortable but not warm and performed much better than the expedition mittens I used last winter where my hands would go numb after 15 to 20 minutes of riding. I stop a lot to take pictures and have to take off the gloves. Holding a frozen camera my hands freeze fast. One of the nice features of the electric gloves is that they will slowly restore numb hands to relative comfort.

LESSON THREE: They are cumbersome to use. Running cables through the jacket every time I gear up, plugging in gloves and connectors, making sure the engine is running before plugging in or disconnecting before turning off in kindness towards the battery, it’s a lot of fussing around. And you need to do things in order. If you put the gloves on before you make those connections you have to start all over again. Since I stop and start a lot it means a lot of extra steps. I can deal with it in return for warm hands but I bet some would find it bothersome if not flat out irritating. I liken the process to putting an infant into a car seat. Once you are practiced it is a piece of cake. To the unwashed outsider it looks like hell.

LESSON FOUR: The gloves are nice. Well made, soft, luxurious on the hands, warm on their own, I really do like them. I fought the cold hand battle a long time, convincing myself it was a badge of riding honor to function in the cold by warming my hands on the headlight. I remained stubborn in the face of many suggestions to get electric gloves. Now I have them and I am ruined. What’s next? A windshield? Electric gloves? A motorcycle? I fear the bigger is better trap or which technology is a part.

At least my hands will be warm as I think about this stuff.