Marilyn Smith

The Majesty is cooling off in the driveway and the Vespa is cooling off in the garage with a full tank of gas and 20 more miles on the odometer. I’ve survived another scooter lesson.

We were up early to do shopping and I checked three or four items off a really long weekend to-do list. Sat down with the latest Sunset and TIME after feeding the animals the next item on the list looked like a waste of a sunny day. “Do you want to take the scooters out?” I, who seldom suggest something fun, asked Stan. “Sure,” he replied. Only I would know that his Happymeter had pegged out with that one little word.

He got the covers off both scooters and rolled mine out of the garage. We suited up in our scooter jackets, boots, helmets, and gloves. Lesson No.1 followed: learning to rock the Vespa off its center stand, then get it back onto it. This is one of those little things about learning to ride that keeps me awake at night: the scooter weighs 350 pounds. The front end wiggles. But I did it, maybe three times, before it was time to ride.

I did a whole lot of frightening things today, starting with riding out of our driveway over our rolled curb. At the end of the street, a nice lady walking her dog let me cross and turn before she crossed. Smart move on her part. I pulled on the accelerator too much and was immediately up another rolled curb onto the sidewalk on the opposite side of the cross street. Stan, riding ahead, turned around and came back. “How do I get off of this?” I asked. “Just ride over it,” he said, and showed me, and I followed.

Over the next hour, I:

• Rode across two sets of railroad tracks, one of them while making a right-hand turn.
• Used my turn signals and almost always remembered to cancel them.
• Rode the speed of traffic, most of the time.
• Learned that even if you waive at other motorcycle riders, they don’t always wave at you if you are on a mere scooter. Does it make a difference if it feels to you like you’re on a motorcycle? No,  but several people did give me the low pointing-at-the-ground wave.
• Turned from Kennel Road onto Highway 20, then onto Scravel Hill Road with traffic coming every which way.
• Turned onto Knox Butte Road from Century Drive under similar conditions.
• Learned how to fill the gas tank after the fuel light came on as we turned from Kizer Avenue to Century Drive. Cost: $5.03 for 1.8 gallons.
• Spent some quality time leaning against the Vespa in full view of three lanes of Saturday afternoon Pacific Boulevard traffic when I failed to get it started after the fill-up. I did, once again, get in onto the center stand by myself, though. Eventually, Stan came back to the gas station. Hold the brake when you press the starter. Duh.
• Rode all the way home from the gas station by myself because I couldn’t imagine trying to rendezvous with Stan in the Ping’s parking lot whole recovering from pulling onto Ninth from Sherman without getting killed.
• Rode up over the same rolled curb into the driveway, cut the engine and rocked the bike up onto the center stand just before Stan rode in behind me.
• Had a lot of fun.

The engine’s cool now. Time to learn how to rig up the battery charger and put the cover on.

Tweet This Post