The clerk and I had a good laugh when I told him I had to buy a screw. Ha ha! And then I told him that scrod was the fish most commonly used in fast-food sandwiches and there was a pretty funny joke about “Can I get scrod in this town?” but since I had to explain that scrod was a fish, the joke wasn’t that funny anymore.
Anyway, he had to order the screw (!), so I paid him the 75 cents and left. Before I got out the door, though, I was stopped in my tracks by a new scooter the dealer had on the floor, a Yamaha Vino 125. It is blue, “a blue true dream of sky,” as e.e. cummings put it, though he wasn’t talking about a motor scooter at the time.
Time to reboot my townscape: we were going to get by until at least spring on the six or eight vehicles and one horse we already have. Maybe then we’d buy another ebike if we were still fighting over who gets to ride Big Swede today.
But I could see right away that the Vino filled an important niche in our commuter’s stable: the inexpensive two-wheeler that gets great mileage, is fast enough to use on all city streets, is easy to ride, and is practical for trips of fifty or even a hundred miles. In fact, always putting my wife’s interests first, I thought this could be the perfect ride for Mary to take out to her friend Nancy’s, where she keeps her horse Woodrow. She goes out three or four times a week, and that ten-mile drive into the country is really the only time when we have to use a car.
The test was whether Mary could see herself commuting on a scooter and whether she would fall for the Vino or not. I talked her into going down to the dealer with me when my screw came in, and fortunately, she was quickly persuaded by all the practical considerations of owning a scooter.
“It’s so cute!”
“And,” I pointed out, “it will go fifty, maybe fifty-five miles per hour, so it will keep up with traffic even on the bypass.”
“It’s so cute!” she said.
“It gets sixty to ninety miles per gallon. We’ll probably get on the high end since we’re both little people. It will practically pay for itself in, uh, a year or two.”
“It’s so cute!”
It is cute. It also has a big storage area under the seat, and we’ve ordered a basket for the rear rack, plus a windshield for cold-weather riding. Like the ebike, it will be great for commuting and shopping.
Mary loves it. She’s already doing some practice rides in a parking lot with me providing gentle coaching. (Turn! Turn! Aaaggghhh!) She’s signed up to take the three-day beginning rider course through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. Even on a scooter, learning to ride is a little intimidating.
So now we’re out $4,000 in less than a month for two new bikes. It sounds like a lot of money when I say it slow, and our “savings” might be stretched to cover an emergency, like if our dogs both need their rabies shots at the same time.
Still, just last spring I was thinking about getting another car so I wouldn’t have to drive my truck. An inexpensive used car that gets good mileage, maybe a five-year-old Honda Civic. Probably eight, ten thousand bucks. Only 35 or 40 mpg.
Not that cute.
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