Ambushed

"You must be Conchscooter"

Argh! Bugger that bloody dog, she gives me away every time. I kicked Cheyenne and ran for cover. The woman had a nerve walking up to me in broad daylight, throwing her arms around my neck and treating me like a long lost relative. She didn't really she just said hello with a bright smile.

Actually Sue turned out to be quite nice which I suppose is a requirement if you are going to operate a dust catcher store by the name of Bliss on Lazy Way Lane (http://www.blisskeywest.com/). The woman, and her unseen husband, have balls of steel it turns out, not just because they say hullo to people in the street but by virtue of moving to Key West and starting up a new life and being wild and youthful and I feel old and carefully planned by contrast. I would no more throw myself on the tender mercies of commerce than I would launch myself from an airplane even with a parachute. Which goes to show we need more brave people in the world. Oddly enough there is a contingent of people, busy bodies decidedly not in the Key West mold, who think dogs shouldn't ride on scooters and only humans should have that pleasure. The theory is the dogs might get hurt. I discussed this at some length with Cheyenne, who it seems has developed some fascistic tendencies because, as a former pound dog, she paraphrased Mussolini to me (in English): Better a day as a scooter riding puppy than a hundred years as a fenced in dog. (Meglio un giorno da leone che cent'anni da pecora). Risk assessment is a lost art in fearful America. I blame television. Mind you riding a scooter while talking on the phone is likely to lead to a short life.I hope it was a happy life for the kid in the picture above chattering away. I guess we all have our risk tolerance set at different levels. I did some monumentally stupid things on motorcycles when I was young, but lacking cell phones we had to be stupid in different and irrational ways. A few years ago I read on the Modern Vespa Forum ( http://modernvespa.com/forum/) a spirited discussion about how unsafe it is to ride a scooter with only one hand on the handlebar. It was about then I gave up on forums, dispensers of silly advice and started my own blog.

I see lots of people ride bicycles and motorcycles with their hands off the bars but I am too chicken to do it even though I know the gyroscopic effect will keep me upright. One handed I can mange just fine. Call it irrational fear. Cheyenne has no fear at all when it comes to the smell of food. She stuck her head in the fence of this abandoned home, formerly owned by the Bahama Land Trust and waited for something good to happen. I should have kicked her again, but as I was joking about kicking her in the first place I cuddled her instead and told her to develop a little healthy fear even and especially when she smelled something good to eat.