North Florida Vespa Ride

I was offered a couple of hours to myself, a Gate brand gas station near the hotel was listed as selling ethanol-free gas so I was set. I had to see just how this my third attempt at owning a Vespa was going to work.

I put two and a half ounces of oil in first, then I loaded one and a half gallons of gas (which came to $5:41) and added a further one and a quarter ounces of oil for the half gallon of gas. My theory is to put oil in first to get the stuff mixed, then make up the rest at the end. The oil in the gas lubricates the engine do it is critical to get it right. Most Vespas like mine have a separate oil pump to feed oil to the engine but I wanted the simplest model I could find...and I got it.

I took County Road 208 west toward the St John's River, and it was a good choice with very little traffic, and speed limits far beyond my break-in speed. Once run in this little engine will eat 55mph for lunch.

The old fashioned engine is supposed to be used lightly at lower speeds, no higher than 35 to start, always varying the speed and increasing gradually after hundreds of miles. B-o-r-I-n-g. But necessary.

Commuting on Highway One will be a trial at these speeds but slowly slowly I will get this thing run in and done. Then we'll see how the cages get out of my antique's way!

There is no ignition key yet as the proper ignition switch failed to arrive from Italy and Gene the restorer won't substitute Indian-built bits. Mind you there is no battery here and the bike runs directly off the magneto, so a fake key is no big deal. Twist the slot and press the kick starter and this thing putters obediently to life. When the zombies take over the world this little tank will carry me to freedom when more sophisticated machines run out of electrons.

Just because I was rattling along at 35 didn't mean I couldn't wriggle around in the bench seat and play with my camera... I was alone with my Vespa, with a cooling setting sun and lots of lovely light.

I was put in mind of Scooter in the Sticks where Steve says he is inspired to stop and make pictures by his slow speed meanderings and the ease of use of the Vespa. And mine is even lighter and easier to park than his modern heavyweight.

230 pounds complete with spare wheel ready to go, twelve horsepower two stroke single cylinder engine, four speed gearbox, theoretical top speed of 63mph (100kph) and a possible 60 miles per gallon. The ideal commuter with little maintenance and a long heritage as a tough daily rider in harsher conditions than those found in the Keys.

When this scooter first appeared in 1977 I was horrified at how square they made the lines. Nowadays the P series Vespa looks lovely and traditional to my eyesight, warped by the passage of time.

Traveling as slow as molasses look what I come across...BBQ to go...I pull a quick u-turn...easy to do on my ugly duckling and putter up to the front door.

"You ride that thing everywhere?" asked the guy in the stripey top. "Not yet," I said, "but I want to." $14 later I had half a rack of ribs dangling from the seat hook.

Well, I had to have a quick taste. Delicious. This minor episode put me in mind of a chapter in T E Lawrence's collection of stories called The Mint, including a tremendously evocative description of riding at speed. Absurd I know as I tottered around trying to keep my Italian stallion under 40mph, but Lawrence described picking up bacon and eggs as he traveled and here I was with my bag of ribs. Ha! This bodes well.

I traveled about thirty miles in a circle through farming country west of I-95 and I was glad to get back to the hotel temperatures were dropping with the sun and I was ready. The scooter promises a good ride. Vibrations smoothed out significantly the closer I got to 40mph and I pulled out my phone GPS to calibrate the surprisingly accurate kilometer speedometer. The riding position is nerdily vertical and puts a lot of stress on the left wrist when pulling in the clutch and shifting the four speed gearbox on the handlebar shifter. Changing up is relatively smooth but I will need to work on downshifts which are notchy and finding neutral needs to happen before coming to a stop. Practice and breaking in will make this smoother.

It takes but a hair of accelerator to keep the scooter rolling at an indicated 60kmh which on the GPS is 36 mph, and it's easy to see how peppy this engine will be once the break-in is completed. This is not a modern scooter built for people who drive vars and expect smooth electronics and information screens. The Vespa is delightfully crude and seems go progress with a certain masculine certainty. I enjoyed the ride a lot, even though I like speed.

I got the P200 because it is significantly faster than the 150 or 125 models. I also wanted factory stock for maximum reliability. I am looking forward to traveling and seeing and photographing things with this scooter.

It is not a substitute for my Bonneville which I love as a completely different ride, but I do like the relative complexity of mixing fuel, managing the shifter and actively using a 35 year old scooter.

So far so good. Gene at Scooters Originali in Allentown Pennsylvania did me proud.

Further reading:
Features of the P200
Why I Like this Vintage Tourer
La Vida Vespa
Stergios Gogos (use the Google translation button on the page and it works quite well).

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The King's Head

Half a dozen miles north of St Augustine, alongside a four lane stretch of Highway One there is a big red double decker bus. It marks a roadside haven.

I need to stop whining about the hole left by a recently closed Irish pub in Key West, so spending a couple of hours here could be considered bittersweet.

The owner's daughter was ruling the roost, a cheerful presence we had met on a previous visit and she served me my Old Speckled Hen, and brought us a Cornish pasty to share.

My wife tried one of the mixed drinks, not the kind you imagine, but a mixture in this case of beer and cider, I believe they call it a snakebite. Because it is intoxicating but she suffered no ill effects.

The pasty does the job but it's not as innovative as the Irish foods Finnegan's used to put out. The afternoon sun filled the space with a glowing warmth. I could have sat for hours doing nothing much but we had a hotel room to check in, and our dog snoring in the car needed a walk.

So we took Cheyenne downtown, where we walked around enjoying the lights, the clean streets...

...the absence of drunks, and the overwhelming numbers of happy families enjoying a stress free night out.

I wonder if Key West could pull this off?

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Brazilierissimo!

Sit on the porch of the Ximenez-Fatio museum in St Augustine and enjoy a sunny day, while contemplating 19th century life as explained on the tour you just finished. Then get hungry and figure someone must be selling food on Aviles Street, the first Euro-street mapped in the future United States, and named for the founder of the longest continuously inhabited town in the aforementioned USA. Take that Jamestown.

Restaurant and Cafe Del Sol has no website and online reviews are mixed. We liked it. A lot. And itbwason Aviles Street right around he corner from our tour. We had previously tried some food at Nonna's an Italian joint up he street but they were only serving sandwiches for lunch so we branched out and settled in under the blue and free flag of Portuguese America. Very comfortable it was too.

It was the pope who split the Americas between Catholic Kingdoms with the simplicity and infallibility of Solomon. Portugal got Brazil and Spain snagged everything else. The British singed everyone's beard from time to time and the French did their best to keep up. I know very little of Brazil and my wife who went there years ago could not accurately remember the food, but if modern Brazilians eat like this I need to plan a trip there. We started with asomethingbthat vaguely approximated a Cuban Mojito, Caipirinha made of cane liquor sugar and strong limes. It was delicious yet not intoxicating. We had two each to prove the point.

Our plan was to order several appetizers to get a cross section of Brazilian good and we naturally went a little bit too far. Being creatures of the south we decided to eat indoors and look out at Aviles Street.

In Brazil apparently they call empanadas pastel and quote delicious they were too. We had meat and cheese and like the other dishes we chose the food was lightly and balanced, the flavors were mild yet pronounced. I found it captivating.

This madness which I attempted to photograph below, sold me on Brazil as a food destination. Call me provincial but I have never heard of a mashed potato sandwich and now that I have tried this appetizer version I am sold. The only other type of tuber sandwich I had previously heard of was fried potato sandwiches sold in England to the laboring classes as "chip butties" where a butty is a Northern slang for sandwich, more or less, and chips are of course freedom fries. These Brazilian contraptions layered mashed potatoes studded with vegetables with shrimp or ham or salmon on top and a cheese flaked strawberry to finish off. They were extraordinary, not subtle yet mouthwatering and very filling.

Ground beef in breadcrumbs lightly fried thus moist and crisp and heavenly. Taken with fresh salsa it was utterly superfluous and delightful.

We skipped pudding, paid the fifty dollar check and staggered off to digest lunch as we picked up our patient dog, snoring in the car and took her and ourselves for a stout walk. Soon enough lunch time fluids made themselves felt and we sought out some public loos. My wife is incorrigible and found the fanciest possible in the lobby of the Casa Monica. Very satisfying.

I guess my experience with lunch reinforces my pleasure in seeking out my own experiences while leaving the Internet grumblings of the unhappy at the door.

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Go Fly A Kite

It's not Kitty Hawk but it is a view of the beach at Anastasia State Park on the barrier island protecting St Augustine. We had our handy annual State Parks Pass and we used it to get in, and though tame Labradors aren't allowed on the beach we took a stroll on a boardwalk to check out what we don't get to see at home, and that is a magnificent sandy strand.

A cold front was passing overhead, strong north winds blowing thick black clouds south, leaving blue skes and weak sunshine to the north. On the cusp of this line stood a man in a broad brimmed hat holding a piece of string.

He said the Fat Albert overhead was twelve feet across, wing tip to wing tip and in the following fifteen minutes I learned more about flying a kite than even the movie The Kite Runner could teach. He couldn't stop talking so my wife snuggled below the fence line out of the wind and I gave up seeking escape and listened to the flood of heavily accented words.

he was from Lynchburg Virginia and retired a shad subsequent to retirement given up flying model planes as they don't travel well in his twenty six floor RV, kites it is then, and they provide an excellent upper body work out and an opportunity for hours of meditation.

We got onto politics and where I know nothing about kites, politics I do. He said he had never paid attention in the past so I guess his newfound enthusiasm gave him instant expertise, but he did like to think young people today can't do what he did at their age. I supposed his grandchildren were the exception of course, the always are, but laziness and. Competence stalk the land apparently.

When he laid into Affordable Health Care I asked how Medicare was working for him. Funnily enough "free" government run health care seems to work fine for the formerly hard working members of the self reliance generation. I listened and let him carry on, kites, politics or grandchildren he obviously felt a strong need for one way communication and who was I try to dam the flow?

Such was the flow I never did get to ask his name but if you check the first few pictures you will see the next group of captive audience who fell into his circle and the kite talk started again from the top as we slipped away.

One is supposed to nurture eself wit encounters of this type but it didn't do much for me. I wanted him to be thoughtful, a life lived in shades of gray, informed by nuance. Instead he was a mass of clichés, not party political but of the sort that sees all politicians as liars, all kids as lazy and all gardeners as illegal. It's an easy view of the world from a man who looked startled by the idea of driving to Mexico, who preferred to be surrounded by the familiar. That was fifteen minutes of my life I'll never get back.

Cheyenne got her reward later, after a long walk in the woods and a short walk through a parking lot.

On the way home we stopped at Flakowitz in Boynton Beach for lunch, chopped liver (ugh!) for my Jewish wife and egg salad for the goy at the table washed down with endless coffee as we cranked up for the last four hours home. At the next table I noticed some people have figured out how to avoid conversation altogether:

During the drive my wife slept and I had time to think. I came to one conclusion, a cliché of my own, as we pulled up under the tree house we call home.

The more I see people, the more I like dogs.

 

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