Modern Vespa

Ok, screw books; let's talk about how I'm going to spend your money...and the meaning of life.

Yesterday I ran my buddy up to Spokane for chemo, which is always, or at least should be, a double dose of existential exploration, as A) he's not expected to live out more than a few years and B) Spokane simply sucks -- for over 30 years visiting there has filled me with middle-class anxiety: don't fuck up your life or you'll wind up toothless and panhandling on the streets of Spotucky....

But, oddly, I've spent so much time with friends and family in chemo wards that my response has simply become...shopping. And so I spent three hours killing time by driving around all the moto shops and sitting on a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of bikes.

My findings?

The new/retro Triumphs are sexy but too big and, well, the lil radiator just ruins the lines for me, intruding onto the fantasy that I'm sitting on the 1960s. No, you're sitting on the commodified desire to re-sit on the 1960s. Also, who needs that many ccs to tool around town? Especially if, like me, you live in a town that is 3 miles from end to end.

BUT the Triumph/Husq dealer did have a used MG V7 and THAT is one sexy, perfectly sized bike! Not too big, not too small, jusssst right. And with 2k miles and a price tag of $5,000, if I were the kind of guy who threw away money following his heart's desire, I'd be taking the trailer back up there this morning.

But I'm not that kind of guy, and I drove off to another dealer outside of town which turned out to be a Mega-Dealer (speak that in your Big Time Wrestling! voice): a full safety course set up and about 100 bikes, Beamers, Suzukis, Hondas, Yamahas....

Sat on the CB500x and that was nearly jusssst right. But I think now I see it's a lil too street oriented for me and my guess is I'd quickly both outgrow it AND simultaneously wish for something more dirt oriented...or I'd just want a VStrom, which is essentially the same thing but more everything.

African Twin was standing next to the 500 and yeah, that is one sexy mofo. But 'uge!

The 300 beamer looks uncomfortable as hell and too much like a transformer....

Over to the dirt-ish bikes...

The KLR650 is de riguer around these parts, but up close and personal they still loom to large, or too tall, for me. I'm not short, but they seem...too much...for me to wrangle right now. That may simply be all the plastic on the new ones, but they're just hulkingly *tall* and I have this vision of dropping it on me lil legs, way out in the sticks...which is really where I want to ride more: way out in the sticks.

Kawi KLX250 next to the KLR drips badassitude but damn a dude in his mid-50s with a bad hip is gonna need a ladder getting on and off that thing. Sorta felt like I was staring at one of my students: so hot, but so...young.

And so, yawn, toe -dirt with shame: the ol' XT250 is probably what I really need, tho nearly everything in the whole damn shop dwarfs it, tho the KLR and KLX stare down on it with disdain, tho nearly every single other bike in the shop says "hey cowboy, I like it rough and I can make you young alllll over again."
Nice low seat and the promise of not breaking my leg (in toooo many places) when I drop it. But....

But....

But a lil too small for the highway miles.

And so I'm back to the new Versys x-300. Goldilocks fricken designed that thing, and tho my locks have long turned from gold to...flesh tone and gray, that's a smart lil bike for a not so smart old man.

But no new (or used) bikes this year for me, as my shekels are all headed toward Cannoballing....

So, picked up my buddy at the ward, he popped a couple "lozenges" for the pain and home thru the pouring rain ("April is the cruelest month..."), down thru the poverty of the reservation and on a whim we stopped off at the Indian casino. Jesus, as if the day wasn't depressing enough! Gray faced chain smokers feeding the slots. Even in the hipster-existential-irony of the moment I couldn't make myself lose a dime and I dragged him on out....

Much talk of the dangers of motorcycles (few were as vehemently opposed to my riding as this guy) and I opened up again about how I've lost one or two friends to...death for the past 15 years (including a mutual friend just two weeks ago, at age 46) and how that's actually inspired me to ride, in part because I'm not convinced any of us have that many more years in front of us and in part because the only way to deal with the fear is head on, throttle in hand, eyes sober and bright on the road ahead....

Despite a day in the car all I wanted to do when I got home was ride the V, but it was dumping rain, and it's dumping again and still all today. But tomorrow it's supposed to let up in the afternoon, and it'll be Friday, and if the pleasures in life are fleeting, they are therefore all the more precious. We point our rides toward the West, toward the setting sun, chasing, chasing as it recedes, until, one day, we catch and ride the horizon all the way down to the great who the fuck knows what's next.

Amen.

I think I've found a soul brother.

Lucky to have (...a bit of googling...) about 10 hours time difference and close to 5000 miles / 8000 km between us. Otherwise we 'd agitate each other to loose our last pennies on bikes....

So let's deal with the bikes first.

You've got pretty much identical view on bikes as I do. And I've got a test ride booked for a MG V7, just waiting this damn snow to finally melt away. I really, really hope it feels as good as it looks - cause I won't buy it if it don't. You see, I really wish my money and me to go separate ways.

I've taken a spin with a V9 and that sucked ergonomically to me - but V7 both looks better and feels better just by sitting on one.

And there's more - probably because some wiseass (no names mentioned) succested in one late thread that I propably could affort to buy a new street bike AND keep the VanVan, this got me thinking and that's my plan now. Me, who keeps his bike outside in winter. Me, who don't have a garage. And have a short summer and limited time to ride. Yeah, two bikes make sense. This is excatly what I mean with the lucky 5000 miles distance.

When I looked at the photos in this thread, I also came to the conclusion that Honda CB500X is not your bike...so could have saved you that trip. I've been looking at it because my riding is more on bad tarmac, it's a good tool for that. And yeah, it's so annoyingly good and easy to ride, that you could get bored.

Again, looking at those marvellous, half(or more) deserted areas you've got just for yourself, I've also decided that a Versys 300 could well be the adv bike for you. Just a word of wisdom from a like-minded fellow - test ride if possible, even if you're just day dreaming of one. Ride also a strecth with higher speed. One thing that I can see could go wrong is that you'd get annoyed of the high rews at higher speed - Vespa is so damn mellow, which is of course a good thing. I can feel (!) what you are looking for, and believe me - for some reason there does not seem to be excatly that kind of bike on market today. Versys is close, but I know you know what I mean.

Phew. Now to easier things - meaning of life.

I had a semi-serious health issue two years ago - it was actually first mis-diagnosed worse than it was, so I got some thinking to do. Went through an operation and everything is fine. But when it was still uncertain whether I'm physically able to ride at Spring or not, I fully realised what this hobby means to me. Well, there were some other observations too, like how my wify is actually quite nice etc., but let's stick to the bikes.

And here we go again. It's Carpe f***ing Diem. But not so that you'll do and try everything stupid before the weight-challenged lady sings. It's more like stop and smell roses kind of thing.

I know and I guess you know that we're not the type to buy a big bike, try WOT and immediately ride out of road. It's just not the way I am. Life is more important to me than riding insanely - but exactly because life is important makes riding so important to me. So yeah, there are risks involved, but buying a 300cc bike instead of 250cc bike won't change the situation - well, actually for you it would propably be safer to ride with a big wheeler at those places you do.

Let's hope a sunny Friday. I'm still looking for snow to melt, but soon...sight.

Brother from another mother!

We're gonna be in Spain this summer for three weeks so you and yours should come down for some warmth and we'll meet up in real time. Stranger things have happened: in Spain we'll visit a Belgian soul-mate I met 20 years ago in ... China.

If not, some day I'd like to get up your way to see how such a cold, dark, deep-wintered country can be so happy. Seriously.

I'll be curious to see what you think of the G7, and I should mention some of the Ducati scramblers looked interesting and well-balanced, size-wise, as well, tho I still feel the scramblers are more about style than utility and I'd want something cheap, like a Van-Van!!, to beat up, so, yeah, you're gonna need a couple bikes, at least. 8)

Gotta throw in that the other bike I'd really like to try is the DR650, which might have the benefits of the VStrom and KLR combined with the relative lightness of the Versys300x...and less of the plastic to break....

But you have the Van-Van to fill that niche.

I'm not yet convinced I'm old and wise enough to not ride stupidly...certainly one selling point of the Vespa is that you can feel like you are riding it to its very limit, feeling every wave of pavement and wringing its neck when you pull out of a tight corner...when in fact yer tooling along at 45mph while the prospect of having to control my own impulses on a machine that would outrun my abilities is, I must say, still imposing.

Always welcomed to this cold, dark, sparsely populated country full of spruce and pine trees and thousands of tiny lakes in between. And a few happy people.

I'm seriously thinking these happiness gallups are based on some statistical error. But yeah, I know a spruce or two, so glad to show you around if you ever decide to venture this far.

I totally forgot that you still have DR650 and many other cool bikes that we don't. DR650 was dropped away here already because of Euro3 emission regulations (if I remember correctly) and Euro4 killed the rest of nice old skool single cylinder bikes. That's one of the reasons I'd like to keep my VanVan, bought it just before Euro4 time started.

We have only V-Strom 650, which is a 2-cylinder "serious" bike with serious weight and lot's of plastic.

I have to say DR650 was one the great bikes that's not for shorties - because of the light weight I could just about tip toe with it....but that required a bit of anticipation. But yeah, that would be a very nice bike to trash...I mean to ride in a sophisticated manner. THAT's what you should test ride! It even has a bit of that manly retro charisma that's lacking from many of the new, arguably better made for a specific purpose bikes.

I hope it's a sunny Friday over there, it's raining slush here in happy Finland...keep the pics coming!

Rare accurate weather forecast and thus a rare, well-timed respite from the rain, so off we go for about three hours/98 miles of the most pleasant rides of the year. Even had the heated grips turned off for awhile and the face-shield up, tho, surprise of surprises, down along the river there were actual bugs to splat!

Weekend is supposed to be nuthin but rain and wind, so time to figure out the GPS software AND try to gather the courage to shape a new, taller Lexan screen for the dual windscreen....

8)

Great photos and a nice ride.

Turkish Kebabs at Sumner beach Christchurch NZ. Enjoyed the last balmy weather of summer. Snow and rain tonight as winter sets in. Will sure be a shock to the system.

Monday meanderings before the week's storm blew in. Friday now and talk of 65 degrees down in the canyons tomorrow, and everything's in full bloom down there. Fingers crossed.

Occurred to me that what was two seasons ago a brand new experience full of discovery has now become, in this third season, a new tradition with its own set of ritual visits to increasingly familiar places.

There's still no substitute for the rush of the new, but there's a calm beauty in familiar change of seasons.

Those superb shots just keep coming tdrake - inspirational! It's some big country you've got there on your doorstep.

Great shots.

For our own sake, wishing you an awesome riding season.

Have we seen that cemetery before?

I've noticed you have many cool pics, where grain elevators are towering on the background.

I just made a side tour (driving, unfortunately...) in the city of Hämeenlinna in Finland. There's a quite impressive work of art by an Australian artist Guido van Helten.

The taller of the grain elevator rows is about 50 meters high - so this picture (and me as a lousy photographer) don't really do justice to these. In real life they look quite amazing!

Thanks! Yeah...and it's actually the very, very first pic in the thread, from my very, very first ride (whoohoo!), which also was my very, very first visit to this cemetery, despite it only being five miles away these past 28 years.

Forecasts to the contrary, it absolutely dumped rain most of y'day, so I had no excuse but to work on building a 2" taller, secondary, Lexan screen for the Faco dual-screen thingy, first making a form based on the shape of the original screen, then melting the new one, cutting it into shape etc. ...so now I don't have to slouch to position the screen just below my eyes.

Kind of meh overall results tho: yeah, I can get that super quiet "just below the eyes" sweet spot, but riding with a tall screen sorta spoils the view.

Ah well, I'm thinking that on the Cannonball there will be many days with no view but plenty of wind noise.

Oh, wow! That's incredible -- and yeah, can't imagine it in full-size reality.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of silos around here and yet I've never seen a single one decorated in any way. Not, shall we say, a lot of support for the arts in rural 'merica

Cool -- I'd love to see more of those, and if you don't mind I'm putting this one up on Facebook cuz the locals will dig it.

If you do mind, I'm doing it anyway.

Go ahead! The great thing about art is that it may ignite creativenes in many ways...who knows what this wil get started!

These paintings are fairly new, done last Autumn. Grain elevators are not a typical canvas here either...

When you head West in between storms in mid-April and your scooter seems to be in perfect form and everything is better than perfect...

...it's probably because you have a 20 mph wind at your back, so when you turn around to ride East back home....

But, whatever, found some more new, old stuff to explore in the future, including an old, abandoned hospital I must have driven past a hundred times but never noticed...

Amazing pics again, ride on!

A technical detail in all those old cars - the quality of chrome is impressive.
It's so weird to see shiny parts in the middle of all that rust

Yeah, right?

I rode past this old 1950s Buick wreck again a couple weeks ago, and you're right; the chrome is essentially good as new.

I surely don't know the technical details involved, but it's been said that about 20 years ago the chrome plating process (at least in the U.S.) was changed due to new regulations to a more environmental friendly process which doesn't hold up as well.

ANZAC Day ride to Macclesfield Hotel for lunch, it could have been the biggest Parmy in the world. Rode in via Clarendon, Kangarilla and Meadows. Couldn't finish the Parmy, next time I'll order the half serve.

Sledge, I find it fascinating both that the hotel is named after a town just up the road from me, and that you Aussies have your own take on the Teeside Parmo!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmo

Looks the biz, that...

FYI Macclesfield (South Australia) was named after the Earl of Macclesfield in 1840 by English colonists who purchased land in the area.
The Parmy appears to be more aligned with the Italian parmigiana as it has a tomato based sauce under the cheese. The meat is usually beef or chicken. This dish is popular pub grub along side fish and chips, and bangers and mash.

I'm enjoying your adventure and many thanks for sharing pics of parts of the world many of us will never be able to see.

Eric

As usual, great weather makes for great riding but boring pictures, and the weather has been insanely phenomenal this week...tho a storm is blowing in as I type, and I was actually too busy to ride much.

BUT y'day I blew off work and was out for three hours under literally cloudless, 80 degree skies. My first run this year at what is now my favorite twisty route. No traffic, perfect roads, vizor open to the elements (and bugs already), and a fairly clear head.

Cool new find: turn of the century schoolhouse outside a "ghost" town...what are we supposed to call all these sort of abandoned, sort of lived-in, totally trashed towns dotting our rural landscape?

That sun set pic is cool, very calming.

It continues to be weird and impressive to see all that empty land and pieces of history available for an explorer - to you - and with that amazingly scenic landscape.

I can fully see why you would not appreciate this at times, especially during winter and bad weather. But it's so different kind of emptiness than we have around here, that it's just amazing. We have those damn trees everywhere blogging the scenery...

And we don't have ghost towns. Or almost "ghost nothing". As we have only 5,5 Milj people living in the country of (...googling a converter...) roughly 35 Milj. hectares area, a lot of which is water and only the Souther part mildly attractive from weather viewpoint, people are now where they have always been.

Literally within a 1/2 miles radius from our house they have dug out some stone arrow heads - as this have been the place where people lived when they first came here. I'm still to find one from my back yard, but will keep digging...actually one of our oldest neighbours told me that our backyard is in the place where they used to bury horses from the near by (then) stables. But no horse bones either so far.

Up in the North, in Lappland you can see a few individual houses and tiny "semi-villages", where people have moved in modern times to get a job. But nothing at the scale of real ghost towns.

So yeah, yours' is a pretty exotic place from my viewpoint!

Lots of arrowheads around here, too, I think, and the last of the "Indian Wars" were fought near here, over this land, just a few decades before these ghost towns were built.

And just a few decades before my dad's parents were born, which has me thinking both of recent the once "distant" past really was...and of how transient American life remains; everything out here is still in flux since we Anglos invaded and settled it.

Nearly all of these ghost towns were ghosted, left behind, since I arrived here over 1/3 of a century ago, while other small towns have been invaded and transformed by retirement money, so that most everything around here is hardly recognizable: it's either falling apart or covered in glitz.

Everything changing, all the time....

Which is maybe part of why I love visiting Europe, to taste a bit of permanence...?

And the open spaces, yeah, like most everyone else around here I actually ignored these long vistas in exchange for the dense, mountainous, forests that make up this region, but now the woods leave me feeling claustrophobic and lonely and my mind seems room to stretch out and expand. (The small "mountain" in the background, below, over my windshield, has over 50 miles of mountain bike trails a good friend of mine started building shortly after I arrived here in '90, and after nearly three decades on those I've hardly set foot up there since getting the Vespa.)

Anyway, spring is here. Unapologetic, full-frontal, Spring:

I like that it took me some Googling to figure out what continent you are on, and that I'd assumed it was actually either an island in the North Sea or the South Pacific.

Looks like a beautiful area!

With apologies to those of you yet unwintered.

"Rural decay?" We invaded? I always thought God just handed it to us. Well, suppose that plague of viruses may have had a hand in it.

Interestingly as a kid I loved looking at the arrowheads my dad collected as a farm boy. Working at the speed of horses must have been a big help. As I got older, I wanted to search out my own on the farm my dad had moved to. Nothing. Zilch. As I got older, I learned that Indians weren't running about shooting arrows willy-nilly and losing their points. Plus there were layers of occupiers of the land. My dad had good luck because he was near a river that had a concentration of settlement and/or hunting activity. Furthermore, there were actually two groups of points dating from several millenia old and another 500 years or so.

Anyway, awesome photos. Appreciate your sharing them!

I love your part of the country tdrake. I have family there. Parents met in Boise. Vacations there as a kid. God's Country IMO.

Lucky you.

Aye, thanks -- I do indeed feel blessed being able to live here. At least much of the year; the other half can feel like a curse, but then I reckon that's true everywhere.

Well, the August smoke disappeared and the temps dropped to a very pleasant mid-70s and I was able to log over 300 miles this Labor Day weekend, chasing down the best regional twisties, and that bumped me up to The Big Three-Oh.

All evidence in this ignored thread -- or the lack of evidence, of postings -- to the contrary, this was one hell of a good scootering summer, and I wanted to take a minute to remember it before school and winter obliterate it entirely.

The Cannonball sent me deep inside my own thoughts to an increasingly quiet place from which I still haven't quite shaken free, which partially explains the radio silence here. Midway through I realized I could just ride deeper and deeper into the sound of the road and happily speak no more than a few pleasantries with strangers. At night, in town, I just couldn't shake free from that headspace, and so I know I missed out on lots of good times with good people, including many of y'alll on this board.

But it was a profound experience none the less and, more than anything else, a chance to remember why I love this country so much, and how isolated my life became when I moved to Idaho 35 years ago -- I've travelled the world a whole bunch in the past 20 years, but I missed traveling our highways and being all alone in our immense spaces.

My Cannonball pics and thoughts are here:
2018 Scooter Cannonball (Page 11)

And my Spain 2018 Vespa shots are here:
Random Euro Vespa Porn (Page 3)

And here are a few local highlights from what little of me was left after these two amazing adventures:

Damned those are good photos tdrake. Love this thread.

Well, my wife has a bunch of friends over filling the house with tipsy estrogen, so I hit the road for a bit and am now hiding in the basement, where it is, I believe, too late for a school-night second beer.

But 'twas mighty worth it....

Thanks much!!

Nice....very nice.....but, you'll have to go out one rainy day and take pics, just for the sake of it!

Beautiful country and great photos, you've got a good eye tdrake. Keep it coming.

A friend has a summer place in Coer d'alene. Over the years I've taken several motorcycle trips to visit with him and do a little boating on the lake. When on the road I like to hang in Idaho and explore for as long as my schedule permits. Last year I road the Lolo again, luv that road, luv Idaho!!! Maybe not so much in the winter....

Paul

Yeah, ditto.

I didn't think you were avoiding us, but your pictures were missed. I blamed the smoke.

Funny thing about this country. It's huge, and oft times amazing. Thinking of living as an ex-pat some day is sobering thinking of all the things I'd be walking away from.

Definitely drop me a line if you come back through! A bunch of these pics were taken on the backroad between here and Orofino, which leads on to Lolo....

Indian summers seem to stretch out forever here and September can lead a fool to believe he's been called back to an eternal California, where winter simply means swapping out flip-flops for Adidas and the girls wear shorter skirts every year all year.

But the month and season now finally give way; all the crops are in and the leaves are gathering their last breaths to sing out in color before they drop and die and are long forgotten; three months of cloudless blue gives way to the rolling gray of storms piled back all the way up to the Aleutians....

Yep, by mid-November I'll be ready to slit my wrists or sell my soul for a glimpse on sunny blue, but for now my eyes are hungry for variation and celestial drama.

Fall. I love thee, tho each kiss tastes of death. But put on that red dress and adorn yourself in yellow and gold and embrace me once, twice more....



But no new roads since the Cannonball, so it's harder and harder to get a picture of something new and interesting. And in early Aug. they chipsealed all my favorite roads, leaving gravel in unexpected, "interesting" places, like mid-turn...and then the farm trucks and combines chewed that up and dragged a bunch of gravel onto the roads as they exit fields....

Still, on top of some longer day-rides, I've been heading out at sunset to catch the light....