Riding The Dog

When things go wrong they don't stop going wrong just because your scooter blew up. There's a certain knock on effect. Take yesterday. A quick glance at this entry will show no pictures. Why? Well, because the Vespa blew up...of course! It happened like this.


I got a ride during Jeremy's lunch hour to the Mason City Greyhound station and there I sat for several hours waiting for the afternoon bus to Des Moines. It's in the airport and that puts it in the middle of many Iowa cornfields. An American without wheels is half a human being and I was uninspired to walk anywhere so I sat close to the power outlets, snuggled inside the warm envelope of wi-fi and safe from the cool 55 degree breeze.

The bus driver was a pink skinned granddad out of a 60’s TV show. With a thick flat Minnesota accent he took the little old ladies' bags and stowed them carefully. He ushered us into his bus like grandad welcoming the family to Thanksgiving dinner. The bus was quite full but the almost empty rear bench was occupied by an African American youth sprawled in the corner, a mountain of flesh topped by a hoodie radiating blackness in an all white bus. I made a beeline for the other end of the bench. He grunted I said hullo and we rode in silence for two and a half hours.


The riders between the all white driver and the all black corner seat at the back were polite and silent, sleeping and reading and staring out at the passing cornfields in the strong autumnal sun. Then another African American boarded at the Boondocks motel stop, a fading fifties motel with peeling paint and diesel pumps for trucks. It wasn't Ramrod Key for sure. But it was where the second African American passenger joined the bus.

He was older, gray haired tall and thin and stooped and he sat near the front. The bus took off. Into the roaring of the engine and the silence of the well behaved passengers came a sudden extraordinary sound. Someone must have unplugged their headphones...a harmonica tore through the silence, riding the scales like the bus was riding Interstate 35. The women in the bus looked around seeking the alpha male with the balls to entertain us. I saw heads darting between seats like prairie dogs checking for the source of the sound. Shoulders shook and laughter rippled. Suddenly we were in a wagon train making our own entertainment far from home. Everyone perked up.


Once he had the bus' attention the old black dude sucked the passengers around him into conversation. How you doin' hows the grandkids, how we be riding the bus - stuff like that. He had them in the palm of his hand, a little more mouth harmonica and then he dropped the F bomb. just conversationally, you understand, in some thought I couldn't catch at the back of the bus. But there it sat like a huge dog turd at a garden party.

There was a sudden collective sucking of Midwest breath across the bus. Jabba the Hut sitting across from me started shaking, trying to hold his laughter in. I made eye contact almost by accident and he turned to look out at the cornfields. It was a joke reserved for particular passengers and he was the only one on this bus in that particular tribe. I was excluded and returned to my Kindle. The bus returned to prim silence.


As we approached our destination the passengers, unasked, dropped their trash in the specified container and I wondered about the ones going on to romantic destinations like Omaha, Dodge City and Cedar Rapids. I know enough to know Wyatt Earp is now just a legend but I wanted to keep going riding the prairie. I'm sure they are all dull towns but they are names to conjure with. Me? I had a hotel reservation next to the Des Moines airport. 5.6 miles away according to my GPS, why yes I have drunk the electronic cool aid. It looked easy enough on my little map, I figured if I walked I would see a bit of Des Moines.

Tomorrow my walk through the Iowa capital. Keep Right At All Times.

Location:Mason City, Iowa.

Alone In Iowa

This is what Iowa is to most of us who drive through or fly over "flyover country" which is how the glitterati of New York and Los Angeles disparage the Midwest and it's corn fields.

I got a different view yesterday as I stood next to my silent Vespa, the cool autumnal wind chilling my fingers even as the bright sun burned my face. Highway 65 North to Minnesota was long and straight and indeed lined by cornfields. The wind was in my face and I was glad of my windproof jacket with liner, my gloves, and the face shield keeping the cold air at bay. But for all that chill the sun was bright, even when the engine went dark.


I checked the fuel and checked for a spark (ow!!) and stuck my finger in the spark plug hole and felt no compression to speak of. Clearly this was a major issue. I called Jeremy, the seller at his home and he said he'd be out with a gas can. I doubted gas was the issue but I felt less alone as I looked around at flyover country.


The lady farmer stopped her tractor and strode through the stubble to enquire as to my condition. She was genuinely concerned and had no fear that I might be some violent predator, the common theme of fear that permeates South Florida's culture, such as it is. I reassured her but I noticed her checking me out at the end of each row as she turned to harvest another line of standing corn. Had I collapsed in the cold breeze she would not have left me to die by the side of the road. This decidedly was not Miami.


My roadside predicament became even more eccentric when two classic motorcycles stopped as they rode south on Highway 65. The lead rider on a Honda 550 was Joe and behind him followed his stepfather (in the gray sweatshirt) on a genuine Suzuki 750 water-cooled three cylinder known fondly as a water buffalo, as it was built in an era of predominantly air cooled engines.


They rode home, came back with the truck and the three of us loaded the Vespa leaving Joe (shy in the blue cap) and I to drive 15 miles south back to Mason City while his stepdad rode the water buffalo home. It was the most natural thing in the world for young Joe to lend a hand. I just stood there wondering why I live where I do.


Back in Jeremy's spacious garage we pulled the head and found a nice round hole in the piston, probably a sign of an air leak according to the reading I've done.Too much air causes heat and seizes a two stroke engine.


The trip is off, a quick return to South Florida is in the works and most likely the Vespa will be shipped later. It is all an adventure but not the one I planned! The good news is no humans were hurt in the creation of this minor adventure. The Vespa was but that can be repaired.



Pride cometh before a fall, as the Good Book says.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Warm Woolly Dog In Hell

I was sitting up in Miami Airport wedged in the grossly uncomfortable torture device in the waiting area for Delta Flight 891 (partnered with Australian Virgin. As attractively bizarre as that sounded I dared not ask what that meant). To my astonishment someone put a small warm woolly dog firmly up against the back of my neck. As pleasant as the sensation was I leapt out of my seat fearful of disloyalty to Cheyenne, even then being driven home and away from me. The owner of the vastly expansive head of hair was mortified, "Ohmygod," she said, "I just like to lean back." Had I been Jack Riepe I'd have seduced her with an impossibly improbable shaggy dog story and induced her to show me her breasts, as it was I got back to my book, grumpily. I don't like flying even with seductive warm woolly dogs wrapped round my neck. The plane was packed. It just got better and better.


I am not alone in thinking that traveling by commercial aircraft is a form of torture reserved for the unfortunate souls obliged to abandon the comforts of home for the uncertainties of the road. If only it were the road! Instead of finding my self on two lane blacktop with the wind in my face I am wedged in a narrow seat with a small table for a desk, permitted the joy of flight only because I agreed to remove my boots and my belt prior to shuffling aboard the tiny hurtling tube to Atlanta and later to Des Moines, with a hundred other unhappy souls, none speaking to each other or making eye contact. Dante's Seventh Circle of Hell.


Five miles below the lucky ones go about their business as they do every Sunday morning at dawn while we zip past, no more than an airborne mosquito annoyance drowning out Lynn Neary momentarily on NPR, but at 550 miles an hour we are soon gone.


Anyone who thinks I'm crazy for physically desiring to ride home at a tenth the speed, over five days not five hours is not a traveler, that's for sure. This isn't travel whatever else it could most efficiently be described as resembling.

(PS: I think the debonair flight attendant likes my pink iPad cover. "Wrong team, mate," I wanted to say to him but I haven't the heart as I overhead them talking about the three other flights they have to take today before they get to go home. And no one is pressing warm woolly dogs into the backs of their necks.)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Conchscooter

I found this image on Modern Vespa and it made me chuckle to myself. I guess it helps when you don't really give a toss what other people think, but I have to confess I am not taking my pink Crocs to Iowa to pick up the Vespa. It is enough that I will be riding a "moped" across the mid west. Once I get the "moped" home I will face the disdain of the motoring public on Highway One. When riding my wife's Vespa, even at 60mph I find cretins tailgating me and imbeciles cutting me off, behavior not permitted by the sight of my burly Bonneville occupying it's spot on the roadway. But I will have to keep this image in mind. Hoping of course the last picture is for effect and not reality.

 

 

 

 

My Vespa Awaits

Jeremy sent me this picture of the Vespa with travel accessories.

Bringing My Vespa Home

A version of this essay appeared on Bradys blog http://www.behindbarsmotorcycle.com/   earlier this month. Tomorrow I fly to Mason City to start the trek home and I will be posting essays to follow in real time.

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I called my wife and had one of those conversations that reek of awkwardness and embarrassment. I needed to ask her indulgence so I was pretty tentative."I keep going back to look at the ad in Modern Vespa" I said. "I think I want to..."

"Me too," she said. "We have to do this," she interrupted me. "We have to buy the Vespa." Uh, okay. Jeremy's ride, seen below, became mine.

Normally my wife is a hard bargainer but Jeremy in Iowa was clearly not excited about having to let go of his baby and we sent him a check for the full asking price of $2500 for a 1979 P200E without harassing him even a little bit. True, Jeremy restored it meticulously in 2009 according to his ad, but why would I pay that much money for such an ancient machine? The short answer is nostalgia, but the long answer is actually quite long, and it is an answer packed with practical considerations.

In 1970 my Italian mother bought me an orange Vespa 50R as a twelfth birthday present. I couldn't ride it legally for another two years but I lived in a isolated mountain community in the central Italian region of Umbria and a kid riding a Vespa was not something anyone noticed. Helmet? Nah. Insurance? Huh? Cellphone? A personal phone was pure science fiction as I wandered the hidden roads and trails miles from home.I always had the travel bug and before the Internet I learned what I gleaned from motorcycle magazines, reading about the exploits of the pioneers who went before me. Every motorcycle I bought as a young adult was my tool to travel over the horizon so I always looked to the practical, low cost, easy maintenance (no maintenance was never an option back then!) yet I wanted the glamor of the motorcycle to shine through the adapted luggage and the piles of camping gear when I traveled the roads of Europe and North Africa in the 70s. A Vespa was not manly enough for this youthful rider. Then I met this man at a Motorcycle show in Milan.

My guru Roberto Patrignani rode to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 on a brand new Vespa and he extolled the virtues of the lightweight easy to handle scooter with eight inch wheels. I was planning a trip across the US and was thinking about a Harley, influenced by a strange movie I had just seen in a classic movie theater in Rome. I was no dope smoking Easy Rider but the principle of riding a Harley across the US looked so right, so correct even though Harleys then were notoriously finicky. In the event Patrignani convinced me of the merits of the Vespa as touring machine at 60mph, so I bought a brand new P200E in Brooklyn and took off with a good deal less cool and a good deal more reliability under my butt! Five months later leaving Mexico by way of Nogales riding north for the border my formerly pristine Vespa looked like this but ran perfectly, still returning 60miles per gallon of whatever fuel I found in Mexico:

I kept that Vespa for ten years commuting in Santa Cruz California where I settled the following year. I have regretted selling the scooter ever since so when my wife saw the love in my eyes she thought getting an Indian built Stella was just the thing for me in Key West. $4200 later this tangerine P150 lookalike was all mine, orange just like my first Vespa. It was meant to be, except it wasn't, because it ended up seizing almost immediately and it never did run right as we can see here:

But the scooter lust was reignited. I tried again with a 2007 GTS 250, a proper modern Vespa at $7200. That too kept crapping out on me though it did last ten thousand miles. It had fuel pump and electrical relay problems that meant it stalled suddenly and at random in traffic.

I loved it, fast and comfortable yet like the Stella, its anithesis in the race to complexity, it wouldn't run reliably. My wife pronounced it "unsafe at any speed" and off it went, sold to a man from Kansas for $3200. Scooters are costly! But the Vespa cult was deep under my skin. When Key West's surly Yamaha dealer got the Genuine franchise I'd ride by and see the Stella parked out front, waiting for me to give the brand a second chance. "No Indian motorcycles," my wife snapped when she also saw me eyeing it with lust searing my eyeballs.

I've had five trouble free years with what is undoubtedly the best motorcycle of my life and after 42 years riding I say that with conviction. Yet my 2007 Triumph Bonneville has, as of this writing, 67,800 miles on the clock, well over a hundred thousand kilometers. I rack up the miles at a rate of nearly 1500 a month commuting in a mild climate, touring Up North when I can with the odd Iron Butt ride thrown in. I adore the Bonneville but I want to slow down the accumulation of miles. I want to keep it a long while and no one really knows how long it will last. I want it to last the rest of my life. I need, for the first time in my life a back up ride. I have never owned two bikes at once, till now. My back up had to be economical, easy to use, highway capable and it had to speak to me. I considered a Suzuki 250TU, a Honda CBR 250 or a Sym 150 Classic but none of them hit the spot. Suddenly it was obvious, I could buy a machine with no final drive chain (the Vespa has four gears and direct drive), a spare wheel (with easily changed split rim mounted tires) and lots of room for luggage front and back all with an easily mounted open frame design. The economy has knocked the market for restored Vespas into the reasonable price range and the more I looked around the more I knew it was doable. The problem was, after all the money wasted on the Stella and the GTS would my wife go for another money pit on small wheels?

I don't know that I will get to do another cross country trip on my P200E, but I can dream. Italians still follow in Patrignani's footsteps and organize "Raids" (journeys) by Vespa the way the maestro showed them in his books. In America where there's no substitute for cc's the idea of a long trip on a 65mph 200cc "moped" is absurd, but I know it can be done and it can be fun. So tomorrow morning I fly to Des Moines from Miami and sight unseen bungee my suitcase to the rack and ride Jeremy's former beloved 2000 miles home to the Florida Keys.I am scheduled to be at work Sunday evening so time is limited. In my mind I will keep this picture of my guru in Afghanistan in 1964 lighting my way as he did on my US trip in 1981.

The design has been refined over 50 years and it really does work well. For me the 200cc model with 15 hp works well as a commuter, a tourer and as a nostalgia machine all in one. Any resemblance between the picture below, taken on the Tropic of Cancer in Mexico's central mountains, and the photo above is not at all coincidental. Because the Vespa as tourer in concept still works for me so I hope very much this journey from Mason City to Key West works and brings back to life a dead memory of travel by Vespa which lights up my memory bank. I expect long boring hours in the saddle with nothing but my thoughts to pass the time, as I will have nothing electronic, no GPS, no iPod, no heated grips to warm me on my way. Just me, paper maps, serendipity and a lttle cast iron cylinder chugging away the miles.

I have no advice for others, not that they would take it anyway. This is what moves me. It looks weird from the outside but from the inside there is method to my madness. And I'm excited about going to Iowa of all places because that's where my Vespa is. My Vespa. Cool.