Macho scooters

I love this story.

For decades, motorcycles got a tough-guy boost from the image of motorcycle cops. In Hollywood movies, police officers roared down desert roads and through city streets after bad guys on powerful, customized motorcycles. There was something extra macho about the cops who rode bikes rather than sit back in cruisers. I bet no one made doughnut jokes about them.

And check out this youtube video from Italy in the fifties ....a show by police on motorcycles that will remind Canadians of the musical ride of our own Royal Mounted Police. (Only our guys rode horses.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrLvYrKYVD8

But with the introduction of high-powered scooters, police in Europe have apparently been quietly adding them to their fleet.

And now it's official. Next week, at Milipol 2013 in Paris, BMW will introduce for the first time a fully-equipped 600 cc police scooter.

Milipol is an biennial show for those in the "internal security" business. It's a gathering of companies promoting the latest in high-tech stuff to those who buy for institutions of authority... like the police. No wimps here. But there will be scooters. And I hope people, like the boys in India who eschew scooters as too girly, will take note.
                                                                                      Pictures below are from BMW

Warm country envy

I rode my scooter yesterday, perhaps for the last time this year. The forecast indicates the temperature in Toronto won't get much above the freezing point from here into December. It was maybe eight degrees Celsius yesterday at the "warmest" part of the day on the last "warm day" for a while, okay weather for walking and working outside but cold enough to chill me after an hour of riding with the westerly winds.

When I see riders in countries who can use their scooters all or most of the year, I envy them. It's so much more economical, not to mention joyous, to be able to throw on a jacket and ride through even the coolest times of year. Perhaps if the season was longer here, municipal politicians would be forced to take scooters and motorcycles more seriously and come up with real solutions to their presence on city streets.

Oh, there will be the occasional hardy rider here, the one who'll wear leg warmers and layers of jackets and gloves and keep on riding until the snow turns the streets impassable. But the rest of us will soon be charging our batteries outside of our scooters, filling our tanks with gasoline stabilizer and greasing the bolts. I will reluctantly join that group this week. But I have made myself a promise: if there is a sudden spell of any weather that stretches a few degrees above zero and some bright winter sunlight, I will pop my battery back into the scooter and grab a bit of a ride, reveling in that rare moment. And if I can get somewhere warm during the worst of our winter I will seek out a place to rent a scooter. My Canadian-bred soul will feel I've cheated nature.