Modern Vespa

Ok....this COULD be 'scooter related...I guess', but now that I am profoundly scooterless, it's not likely.

Here we go then....

It's only two months until the next Sturgis Motorcycle Rally (TM) rears it's noisy, and often ugly head once again.

For this year's gynormous, hairy, grannies-with-tats-and-fishnets, geezerfest that the rally is steadily morphing into, I will no longer be a trombone or accordion-wielding, red bow-tied, dandy with a blue Vespa on the town's main street, but a relatively invisible, accidental, and unwilling, participant, solely due to my domicile's geographic proximity to the epicenter of the thing (20 miles).

The Vespa was traded in on my present BMW R1200R, the accordion was sold, and the trombone was flattened and sent to, as my UK friends say, 'the bin'. .

Along with being severely 'scooterless', I am also completely 'brassless'.

I still have the red bowtie however, and the checkerboard suspenders and sox as well, so there does remain the seeds of future tomfoolery on my part, should the need arise again....which it almost certainly will.

Meanwhile....

Borrow a ebike from someone? The more moped looking (Ride1Up Revv) the better. Or an actual vintage moped if possible? Allow me to ask, how did the trombone get flattened and could you at least kinda play it before its untimely death?

The closest I came to the level of craziness that is Sturgis would be Daytona Bike Week. As a Southeast Florida motorcycle nut, I went to Daytona every year from the age of 16 to almost 30. I usually stayed on the beach side checking out the boardwalk shows which included the custom bikes whose owners usually had a wallet bigger than their ego. Harley always had a big set up as well, but my favorite event was the vintage scoots - Harleys, Indians, maybe a Crocker, a few English bikes, etc... However, I learned early on to get out of town when night came on. During the day was crazy enough, at night it just got stupid crazy. But it changed so much over the years that the last few times I just went up for one day as it wasn't hardly fun anymore.

For years, the main attraction for us at the Sturgis rally was the manufacturer test rides. We would head to Sturgis early in the mornings and set up as many test rides as we could for almost the entire day.

Yamaha, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Triumph, Can-Am, and others, were all well represented at the Sturgis rally, most at the same general location so you could walk around the large parking lot from one brand to the other booking rides on many interesting machines.

Through the years, the non-Harley brands began to slowly abandon the rally, one after another, until almost none of them show up anymore, which, to me, is very, very, disappointing.