My Baby's Alright!

I wanted to wait a few days to be sure – but my baby is definitely in great shape now.

My last entry detailed how, for the past few weeks, when I’ve been starting from a standstill, it feels like my Vespa has been slipping or riding rough. I was worried that something was seriously wrong.

I arrived at Vespa Vancouver bright and early at the crack of 10 last Saturday morning. I had a great chat with Bob, the owner, and we talked about a variety of subjects from upgrading to a bigger scoot to electric bikes to fundraising.

He was setting up for an open house event so I dropped off my scoot and wandered off to Granville Island.

I spent a good part of the day wandering around Kits, enjoying a day of doing nothing for a change. Two lattés and an order of sushi later, about 3 pm, I headed back to Vancouver Vespa.

There was quite a party going on when I got there! The little store was packed with people looking at different scooters and electric bikes and noshing on packs of chips and soft drinks.

I made my way to the front counter and, while I was waiting, a guy walked up to me and said, “Hey, Big Guy, Small Scooter!”

It was a very odd feeling, being recognized for my blog. I’m often recognized around Maple Ridge because I’ve taught so long there but not in Vancouver and not for my blog. It was kinda cool!

It was Bob from Bobskoot. We had a nice conversation about, once again, a variety of topics. Although I love my scooter, I do not have connection to the scooter culture that he has. He told me about all these people he had seen at the open house and, although I had a vague notion who they were, it was obvious that, in the scooter culture, I don’t get out much. A very nice guy, though, and I may try to get a bit more involved during the summer. We’ll see.

Of course, the point of this entry is my scoot.

The mechanic gave it a clean bill of health. After checking all the mechanical parts, doing the maintenance, and giving it a test ride, my baby was feelin’ good. It was $130 – the usual service fee – and I was back on the road again.

Now that I’ve got almost 12,000 km on it, I wonder, if I service it regularly (about every 2000 km) and make sure all the fluids are up and try not to ride it too, too hard, will I et another 12,000 kms? 30,000? What’s the life expectancy of a 50cc scoot anyway?

I guess time will tell….

A grey palette paints the day

When we lived in Scotland on my year long teacher exchange, so many days were grey but also beautiful. It looked like God had decided just to use a palette of greys, but still painted a masterpiece.

Yesterday, the rains stopped and, as I had some appointments in Vancouver, I rode out on my Vespa. It seemed that the Scottish palette of greys was in use again, with the occasional splash of fall colours.

Some dark clouds were brooding over Burke Mountain as I rode through Coquitlam. I had a hard time riding in traffic as I saw so many different cloud formations so I ended up pulling over several times.

One of the cloud formations had sun behind it and I was hard pressed to find a place to pull over. It amazes me that I seem to see so much more on the Vespa than when I’m in my car. I really try to take advantage of the many traffic lights on this route so I can rubberneck safely.

The traffic was fairly light as I headed onto the Barnet Highway. This photo of the sulphur piles in the Port Moody Arm of Burrard Inlet is OK - in reality the sulphur is such a deep and saturated yellow that it almost seems to pop out of its surroundings.

Further on up Barnet Highway, I pulled over and took a photo of the inlet looking west. The colours of the palette had definitely gone beyond grey at this point. Unfortunately, my camera kept shutting of at this point because the battery needed recharging.

I continued on into Vancouver with the sun providing some actual warmth. There were no near-death experiences and a bus driver actually honked to let me pull ahead!

In Vancouver, I stopped at the Kits Coffee Company and had an excellent latté and a Sicilian grilled sandwich. I had brought my laptop so managed to mark most of my students’ work that was done online.

My final stop before my last appointment was Granville Island. I never tire of the views from there. The public market is great there as well - I grabbed some sort of French sausage to supplement my dinner - and then walked out towards the water. Luckily, my camera had enough life in it to fire off a bunch of night photos - of which one or two were pretty good.

Unfortunately, at the end of my Vancouver time, I got a phone call that one of my good friend’s father had passed away. A tradition with this particular group of friends is to buy a nice bottle of Scotch and then spend some time with the person who has lost a parent. I stopped in at the fancy Cambie Street liquor store and bought a bottle of cask strength Laphroaig.

An hour and a bit later, I was at my friend’s house, toasting the memory of his father with a couple of wee drams. This “grey” end to the day, sort of a “pre-wake”, was actually a pretty comforting way to end off the day.

Granville Island - and a chat with Bob

On Thursday, I rode my Vespa into the Vespa store in Vancouver for an oil change. It was pouring but not terribly cold so I enjoyed the ride, especially when my wife and one daughter met me and we went out for dinner at a French bistro, the Salade de Fruits (not too expensive but really good country bistro cuisine).

Yesterday morning, I caught a ride into the city with my wife, and after a latté, went back to Vespa Vancouver to pick up my serviced scoot.




Bob was working there, a real bonus, as he is a very friendly guy who loves to talk about scooters but doesn’t try to sell you a new one every time you walk in the door. He had some interesting things to say, as usual, one being that there was a reversal of sales trends from just a month ago when the 50cc scoots were flying out the door. Now the bigger bikes, including the GTS and the MP3, are the big sellers. He also gave me some frank information on conversion kits - that they can reduce the life of your engine - when I asked about bumping up the cc’s.



He did talk about some of the bigger bikes, reminding me that I could take my parking lot test (for my motorcycle learner’s license) on my 50cc and then I could test drive anything else he had. Can’t blame him for trying!



After I left, and since it was such a spectacularly sunny day, I stopped by Granville Island on the way home. Granville Island is actually a peninsula located in False Creek, which is really an inlet, under one of the bridges, which is actually a bridge, that connect downtown Vancouver with the rest of the city.



It used to be a big industrial area but was redone several years ago and now is a big tourist attraction - for both tourists and locals - as it has, among other things, lots of restaurants, a theatre, a marina, and a public market. An art institute named after Emily Carr is also located there. The one industrial holdout is Ocean Cement, a cement plant.



Usually, it is difficult to find a parking spot - but not on the Vespa! Less than two metres - about five feet - and I was in! I wandered over to the public market and bought some French saucisson sec - you know, those French sausages that hang from a stand and have a white powdery covering. On the way back to my scoot, I stopped by the Ocean Cement Open House. I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I were nine years old - lots of big trucks and machinery and big chunks of concrete everywhere - but it didn’t really capture my interest - besides, the free balloons wouldn’t have made the trip back to Maple Ridge.

I then had a nice, leisurely ride back home in the sunshine. Oh, and Guinness, the new dog, was happy to see me return!