Vespas

It all started out in the Fall of my 12th birthday with the arrival in my life of a bright orange Vespa 50. It was my mother's surprise birthday gift which she announced to me on our way from the airport, sitting in the back of a cab, 20th century Roman ruins flashing by in the background, the Rome of Fellini, though I knew it not at the time.
It would have taken so little to pose boy and machine in the middle of those hillsides, but I guess it never occurred to me to get off and stop riding for what we call today a photo-op, even had I known what that meant.

I was appalled by the gift of such magnificence, I didn't now what to say, a vehicle of my own put me in the world of the self-propelled. This at a time when in Umbria most of my neighbors were still hoping for their first car as their cared for their oxen, ploughed fields by animal power and went to church on foot. I felt like a yokel attempting to assimilate the gift of an automobile- catapulted far above my station wondering what the consensus would be were my peers to hear of my promotion to motorized driver.

It served me well, taking me all over the Umbrian hillsides of my childhood, for I was no more than a child. I rode that orange machine every vacation I spent in Umbria, and at the end of each I put the Vespa away under cover and there it waited for my next release from boarding school in England. And I have no memory of regrets or longing when I put away the Vespa, put away my shorts and pulled out my pinstriped pants, black tie and black jacket- the accoutrement's of the Young Catholic Gentleman Downside Abbey struggled to make of me.

My sister, one of twins, went out with a young man who rode a Vespa, a sky blue 125cc, and it was there I took my first ride on a scooter, my sister in back sidesaddle, her husband-to-be steering and me, from time to time, 8 years old and standing proudly holding the handlebars in front. 41 years on the Vespa is still there, clean and covered awaiting its owners decision to give in to modern helmet laws and take her for a spin in the 21st century. He has little to say of the halcyon days of his youth, except to point out that the machine he courted my sister on was never very fast. "And now I've got to wear a helmet to go slow," and he shrugs, unsentimental farmer that he is.

When I first saw my sister after 25 years away from her home she took me with pride to see the old machine, freshly painted and ready to go. "We still have it," she said shyly. And I found the foot board on the left hand side where she rested her feet riding sidesaddle, a practice forbidden in my home state of Florida, a place where paradoxically one may ride without a helmet!

Time passed and the fad for off road motorcycles swept the Italian countryside. I sold the orange Vespa and traded its reliable power and its comfort for a manly 50cc Beta, an offroad rocket that pleased me at the time and took me on goat trails inaccessible to my Vespa, but that eventually gave way to a real motorcycle, a road machine, and I took those trail riding skills with me on my journeys.

Vespas always hovered on the periphery of my vision and when I read about Roberto Patrignani's trip overland by Vespa to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 I decided to take a trip by Vespa too. 6 months I spent crossing the US and Mexico in 1981 on a P200E I bought in New York. I rode south, my first brush with Florida and visited Vespa Ft Lauderdale for a service and they repaired an electrical glitch, under warranty and in 24 hours! I wasn't even surprised because Vespa was always known as a world wide operation. And there in the background you can see they were still selling orange Vespas, just as I remembered mine, even though these, the height of modernity sported turn signals and mirrors.

That journey across America was perhaps the most enjoyable trip i ever took on two wheels, a journey marked by encounters, a lack of drama, and more photos than I had ever previously bothered to take, it marked a turning point and a year later I was re-united with the white P200E in California ready to start a new life together.

By 1989 I was older and no wiser. I sold my P200E after years of service and thousands of miles commuting. Vespa in the US had folded operations, the Vespa shop in Los Gatos had long closed and I thought I was holding onto a relic. Anyway I was leaving Santa Cruz and California on my boat and had no room for my elderly, outmoded two wheeler...

...Nowadays I promise my wife I would no more sell my Vespa than I would a kidney. It may be late but I have learned my lesson and my GTS is mine till the bitter end, and perhaps when I am immolated at last, my elderly, outmoded 250cc Vespa will go with me

And with it the memories of its predecessors who left such a mark in my memory that I never have looked at a Vespa since without longing. What an odd obession.

Harry Potter and the Short Attention Span

When first it came out I pretty much ignored the children's book. My wife pays more attention to fads and was given a copy of the first book. She liked it and suggested I might. I preferred not to break the habits of a lifetime and only got around to reading a sudden best-seller long after it's public desirability had peaked.

It has always been true for me that books fell into my orbit only after everyone else had finished with them, and so it was with the first Harry Potter book. Imagine my surprise when the novel reflected so much of my strange English life early on, buried in an educational establishment fronted by magicians claiming all sorts of supernatural powers hidden beneath their black magical robes. Harry Potter resonated with me.

I read the second novel in the series, generally a disappointment when a sequel travels a path previously trodden and thus requires less exposition. Hogwarts was less mysterious and thus less interesting.

The third book allowed me to drift away from the plot whatever it was. Since then I have failed to follow the ramblings of the boy magician, ignored calls for his anti-Christian banning and managed not to wonder how it is the author becomes as rich as the queen of England. Yes indeed as the cliche will have it; we inhabit a strange world.

(Me, Mexico 1981, Vespa P200E).

Evading Harry Potter and not remembering my time at Downside School in England between 1971 and 1975, has become harder with the publication of the last book in the series and all the attendant noise. Living so far from the world of my school days has made the Potter story a valuable aid to providing strangers a short cut to my youth.
"Yes," I say, " my school days were like those of Harry Potter."
"Including the magic?" they ask with hopeful disbelief in their voices. Everyone wants magic, against all logic that it cannot exist.
"Yes, " I add solemnly. "With the magic."
Of course it was magical, getting up before dawn, and walking silently, like a thief down long empty corridors. magical because my presence afoot and alert was with legal cause, I was en route to the most magical mystery of them all- transubstantiation.
I was educated from the age of 13 to the age of 17 by Benedictine monks, men sworn to poverty who lived splendidly in the monastery, to which was attached my boarding school. Daily they went about monastic duties gliding silently through cloisters, down corridors and into choir stalls. And there by the dawn's early light, aided by the warm glow of candles we celebrated together the magical transformation of bread into God.
That's more magic than Harry Potter ever managed.
Like Harry Potter, the magic of that period has faded; too many pre-dawn masses, I dare say, similar in all respects to a surfeit of bestsellers: just too rich a diet for my mundane mind. Magic has lost its appeal, and I'm the poorer for it.

Riding to Work

Damn! I love riding to work. I work nights and about the time I am ready to pull up stakes and get out the door its still dark and my Vespa is sitting in the parking lot and I'm ready to go... For some people its an effort to choose to ride a motorcycle to work, they feel deprived on two wheels. Others are afraid to face the world without armor plate. It must be dreadful to live in fear. Longing and fear. They long to ride but fear prevents them. Lives of quiet desperation as the poet remarked.

I don't miss the car radio, I don't crave the silence and distance provided by the cage that surrounds a car driver. I don't long for the protection of sheet steel all around me. I enjoy relying on my wits to keep moving. On the scooter I smell all the night smells, the thick mush of decaying vegetation, the cool salty breeze wafting in from the east, the smell of meat passing McDonald's, coffee brewing at Dunkin's and gasoline as I slide past the gas stations. Its all out there hovering over North Roosevelt Boulevard every morning and every evening.

As the time to head to work rolls round, I promise myself an early start. I ready myself to leave the house and head in to Key West, but I have trouble getting it together to get on the road. Its not that I don't look forward to the ride in and I, only I it seems, don't mind my job, but its just the fact of leaving the house that irks me.

I like my home. I feel like Mole in The Wind in the Willows, going all misty eyed when I talk about my modest little house on stilts. Its only 770 square feet, but it has wide walkways all round, a large covered porch and a wide side deck all of which offer lots of places to hang out, if the air-conditioned living room is too antiseptic. Not to mention a wide bodied dock overlooking the canal, just another place to lounge.

Afternoons come rushing up to meet me, I'm up, pottering around doing a few chores, stretching a few muscles, enjoying the peace of an uninterrupted weekday afternoon and presto! Its four thirty and time to go. That should bring a cheap thrill- slip on the helmet, slide on the gloves, start the scooter and head out down my narrow one way street.

Sniff the musty salt-pond air, check out the building thunderheads over the horizon, turn left on Highway One, accelerating smoothly past Boondocks, the biker bar, and I'm into the flow of traffic heading into town, sun on the horizon, temperatures hovering around 96 degrees in mid-July.

By now, yeah its good to be on the road. But, boy it takes a lot to get me on the road, away from the insects buzzing serenely under my house, tall trees all round, on my small lot, casting pale green shadows, the bright tropical leaves contrasting sharply with the deep blue sky background and the puffy white clouds seeking strength to turn gray, then black and wet. I can sit in my armchair, my book slipping from my fingers, half asleep, ready to nod off to the humming of the air conditioner, like an old man snoring away his dotage.

I could potter some more, make another pot of tea, read some more, cut some dying tree branches in a form of pruning and care, or I could move outside under the umbrella and listen instead to the neighbor's laboring air conditioner, struggling to keep his long empty house cool and fresh and ready for anything- including most improbably his return.

In Summer I leave the house before the sun sets to the flaming west, over the salt ponds, throwing a few last pinks and oranges and purples into my bedroom. It never ceases to amaze me that my mid-western neighbors tunr their backs on the Keys in summer. Their houses, expensive lumps, are left to their own devices much of the year and I'm not ready to complain. I get to hang out at home, do my inconsequential thing all alone, the wife at work and the neighbors on the dark side of the moon, known to some as Kansas.

I try to work up some agitation about this desire for solitude, but the older I get, the more I prefer my own company. And less and less I feel the need to apologize for preferring my own company. Or that of my wife, a patient and long suffering woman who is gregarious and loved and everybody's friend. I think strangers would wonder why she bothered with me, but I make her laugh, she says, so I am safe for now assured of her company.

And as I sit and type and filter out the jangle of work related noise I think about my greeny dreamy refuge on a canal 26 miles away, 35 minutes by GTS, and my wide sweet bed and air conditioned home, fresh cool and alone for me, all morning long.

Home Sweet Home

Its summer time, puffy clouds that tend to turn thundery, flat waters, crystal clear and hot to the touch...
.............inland from the park, the causeway that supports Highway One offers a bed for one of my favorite plants: the seagrape. Their fruit isn't at all bad either, if you can get to the ripe grapes before the birds swoop down and clear the bushes.
Money Key, a mangrove-covered spoil island just south of the 7-mile bridge is cute froma distance. Up close its a mosquito infested pile of sand and rocks, debris piled up b y Flagler's engineers when they built the seven-mile bridge just to the north.
So, back to the theme:

Yes well glad to be home and rested by a few nights at work, so it was past time to head out on the Vespa and check out some of my favorite spots around the islands. It takes a bit to find back streets in these narrow roadways but I've found a few over the years.

The weekly "Solares Hill" runs a summer time feature called "Places we Love" which makes me think I know more than I know, because they feature places I've found on my own. I've also found quiet corners never before published. In case you are wondering this place isn't a secret.

Veterans Park is no hideaway, unless you are heading south off the end of the Seven Mile bridge oblivious to all around you, because there it is, large as life for all tourists to see. Those that are dawdling and looking around will spot this little spot and feel encouraged to stop. I like the shady tables under trees, a breezy place to read and think and snap a picture or two. If one is energetic there is a smidgeon of a beach, swimmable at higher tides. Also you get a nice view north, the seven-mile bridge to Marathon, and to the south the open waters of the Florida Straits. I just love the sparkle on those waters, so call me a tourist too, even though I live here!

My european trip was memorable and deserves a mention, but I was glad to get home, 96 degrees and all.

Settling In

I made it home in one piece along with bags of stuff and hundrds of photos and enough weird memories to last me another year of routine. A mixture in my mind such that I can hardly separate the railway ride from the scooters of Albania from my sister breaking down in tears when she saw me for the first time in 20 years.
The house is as it was, the blog seems do-able after three weeks away and I shall wrestle with the camera in the days to come, and the formatting, and the controls and on and on.
The Vespa started first push of the starter and I rode home from the storage locker with a big smile.
And so, tonight, to work.