Vespas in India

The Hero and Honda scooters, the top two scooters in India, will now have competition from Piaggio. Scooters represent the fastest-growing segment of the two-wheeled market there and Piaggio is counting on that as it reintroduces its scooter.

http://business-standard.com/india/news/the-vespa-scooter-is-back/472762/

Give Me Back My Scooter

Getting my scooter ready for spring was the easiest thing this year. I didn’t have to reclaim it from a storage unit, find a shop that could give it a big tune-up or, as I did one spring, hunt it - and the man who’d absconded with it - down.

When I first bought a motorcycle I felt I didn’t have the mechanical savvy to get it ready for winter and then tune in for spring. Luckily, I’d bought it at one of the most respected and oldest bike shops in Toronto, McBride’s.  All I had to do was ride it there one fall day and pick up it all washed, shiny and tuned in the spring.  I did try, some years, storing it myself but our garage was damp and I was never confident that I was doing all the right steps. Besides, picking it up in the spring all ready to roll was a thrill. Trouble was just after I switched to a scooter the business shut down.

That first winter I found another dealer but it was a long commute on public transit from my house.  And it was expensive.  The next year I left the whole question too late. An early winter hit Toronto that year; the roads were covered with ice and snow before I figured out what to do with my scooter. I had to go on a work trip and needed to find a solution fast. A friend, who’d wisely found space in someone’s garage for her scooter, told me of a dealer in town she’d gone to for repairs, a guy who might store scooters. I called. He did and the price was right too.

He’d closed his old shop, he’d told me, before giving me a new address. I picked a day when the roads were clear and arrived at a unit in a broken down – and mainly abandoned - row of brick units in the city’s west end. There was no sign on his unit; just the number I’d been given.  No one had bothered to clear the laneway. The ice in front of the door was hard, sheer and shiny.  So I walked the scooter carefully across it. Even as I handed my keys and a cheque for half the amount over to the staff at a makeshift desk, I didn’t feel good about the place. I eyed the scooters stuffed into two small garage-like spaces warily.

“You’ll winterize and tune it in the spring, right?” I asked.  The young woman nodded. I still felt suspicious but didn’t allow myself to think about it anymore. The problem was solved. The scooter would be out of sight and out of mind.

But I would get another life lesson from my scooter. I was in a busy job at the time and too often I rushed through the necessities of life, compromising when I had to.  Sometimes, I just didn’t take the extra time to find the best way and I shut off the doubting Thomasina in my brain. I’ve since learned to listen to her more.

In early spring, still too early to pick up my scooter, I drove by the unit and noticed there was a piece of paper taped to the window.  I pulled in to read the sign.  It said that the scooters had been moved and gave a number for inquiries.  I peered in through the grimy window at the emptiness of the space and felt bereft. My scooter was gone and I didn’t know where it was.

I must have called that number a hundred times. I got an answering machine at first but later when, I suppose, there were too many messages on the machine, the phone just rang and rang.  No one ever picked it up and no one called back.

The journalist in me kicked in then. I started searching the owner’s name.  I found it, far too often and never in a complimentary light. The man had been a dealer for a lesser-known brand of scooters, had run into trouble with the company and closed up shop, leaving customers who had given him deposits stranded. The news wasn’t much better at the next business he’d owned. He’d left customers in the lurch and had to leave the premises.

I took my findings to the local police station.  I reported the scooter as stolen so an officer would open a case. The officer I spoke with was helpful and interested in the history I’d gathered about this man.  He promised to look into it and I did get a call saying they’d heard he was opening a shop nearby. But when I drove by that address I saw nothing but an empty building.  Around the same time, I was introduced to someone who’d actually gone out with this guy. It had not gone well but she had a number. I left several messages on that phone.  In the last one, I told him I’d gone to the police and the media. Nobody takes Debi’s scooter.

Days later, just after I’d spoken to my insurance broker, I got a call out of the blue. It was from him. His voice was all light and cheerful. He was sorry for the “misunderstanding,” asked if I knew someone else who worked where I did, perhaps guessing that was how I’d got his number.  I didn’t buy into the friendly act. He had only the vaguest excuses for why he hadn’t answered his messages: been away, setting up a new place was so hard, blah, blah, blah. Bottom line was I could pick up the scooter any time after that day. “Tomorrow morning,” I said in one quick breath.

I got to his new place early. It now had a sign; there were new scooters lined up inside on a clean wood floor. It looked authentic. But I couldn’t see my scooter and until I saw it and had it and rode it away from there I wouldn’t relax. There was another woman there waiting for her scooter. She said she was so grateful that she was ready to put the whole thing behind her; she had her cheque for the second payment ready. I was not feeling that forgiving.

The owner, a young, rather cool look man – again with the friendly act – arrived, ushered us in, gushed about his new business and pointed to my scooter at the back of the shop where a mechanic was tuning it up.  The other woman chatted with him warmly; he offered her a second tune-up when she wanted it. But my doubting Thomasina was still on high alert despite the weird normalness of the situation. I nodded at him stonily, took the scooter as soon as I could but, in the end, gave him a cheque for the balance. I reasoned I just wanted out of there clean, but as a rode away I felt duped. Later that day, after I noticed a mark that may or may not have been on the scooter before, I called to say I’d canceled the cheque until the scooter could be looked over. I never heard back from him. Months later, his shop had vanished again.

Since then we’ve made room in our garage, taken care of the dampness.  Now each fall, the battery comes out and goes on a charger.  I fill up the tank and add stabilizer to the gas, I put a pencil under the wheel that touches my garage floor, spray the bolts and cover the scooter.

But tune-ups still remain a problem.  When I was in Vietnam this winter I passed motorcycle and scooter mechanics on just about every city street. But then the larger streets are lined with businesses selling everything from Hondas to Vespas; the streets are clogged with scooters and small motorcycles. (More on Vietnam scooter culture to come) In Toronto, it’s hard to find a dealer that stays put or in business.

This spring I knew my scooter didn’t need much attention. So I called the mechanic I use for my aging Honda car to see if he would check the tires. The owner, the mechanic and a guy waiting for his car all gathered around my scooter. The owner, an older Italian man, talked had ridden motorcycles in his youth and had all sorts of questions about mileage, parking and licensing.  He was thinking of buying a scooter to get around town.

They fussed over my scooter and when they noticed a bolt hanging loose on the licence plate they tightened that. I felt no need to get on with the next thing in my life. I just enjoyed the moment, standing in the sun on asphalt in front of an old garage, talking to these men about my scooter.

The owner wouldn’t take any money. “You be careful,” he kept saying. No gushing, no lies. With joy, I rode my scooter away, back to its permanent home, in the garage, where it belongs.

Ways to Use a Scooter

I love the scooter culture in Vietnam. In these three pictures you can see how much they are a part of people's lives. People use them to rush through the streets, take a break, or carry just about anything I'm going to explore that culture and the what the transformation from bicycles to scooters has meant for the Vietnamese. But for now here are some images:

All photos by Debi Goodwin

Scooters may be the safest two-wheeled vehicle

Guess the safety training pays off. Scooters are safer than motorcycles and mopeds according to this Australian study

http://www.themotorreport.com.au/53964/scooters-safer-than-mopeds-and-motorcycles-study

Crazy "Graduation"

I heard recently that young people in the United States are not buying or driving cars like they used to. It seems they don’t feel that same pull to the automobile that generations of teenagers before them all over North America have felt. I was driving in my car -unfortunately, I now work too far from my home to ride my scooter on a route that involves six-lane highways - when I heard this and thought how important the car had been to me and my siblings, my parents before us and to my grandparents. Yet, the report rang true; my own daughter shows little interest in driving or in advancing her licence from intermediate to permanent.

The interview suggested that the graduated licensing system was the reason for this shift. GLS was introduced around the world to reduce the number of crashes involving young drivers. For the most part, it seems to have worked. But the by-product may be that, unless there is a keen interest in driving or a need to use a car, young people can’t be bothered with the lengthy process. I wonder how many potential scooter riders feel the same.

As I drove along the 401, a busy highway north of the city, listening to the radio, I wished I could be on my scooter listening to the wind. But I know it would ridiculous for me to ride a light, 125cc scooter at 100 kilometres an hour, buffeted by the tractor trailer truck that would invariably pass me. And yet I have “graduated” in the motorcycle licensing system to a permit that would allow me to do just that.

When the Ontario Ministry of Transportation introduced its GLS in 1994, it required riders of

motorcycles and scooters to prove they could drive safely on “controlled-access” highways before

getting their full M licence. It took years but finally the ministry recognized that taking small

scooters on a highway like the 401 was outright dangerous. So in 2005 it prohibited mopeds and

scooters with engines less than 50 cc from controlled- access highways and dropped the highway

portion from their test.

That still left a grey area for scooter riders who don’t want to travel on highways, but want an engine large enough to give them the acceleration they’ll need in most urban situations. Riders like me. After receiving my M2 on a motorcycle and after I decided the scooter was the right choice for me (see Scooters and The Art of Compromise entry) I asked around and decided the 125 cc Yamaha Vino had the right power. I’ve been riding without incident for years now.

When, a few years back, my M2 was running out, making it time to get my M licence, the full and permanent one, I called to see how I could earn it safely on my Yamaha - without going on the 401.  I tried calling numerous people at the drive centres and was always told that if I took the test required for my engine size in the Toronto area, I would have to go on the 401. I tried to argue that I didn’t think that would be safe and that I had no intention of using my scooter that way. (In fact, I met a scooter rider who did brave Canada’s busiest highway only to be stopped by police who told her she wasn’t allowed on it.) Perhaps just to get me off the phone I was given the only two other options open to me: redo the M2 licence every five years or transport my scooter to a smaller centre (the one suggested to me was hundreds of kilometres away) where the four-lane highway used for the test might not be so intimidating. Since time was running out, I retook my M2, and temporarily put my quandary about the M licence on hold.

As a journalist, I called the Ontario Ministry of Transportation a couple of years ago to figure out if things had changed, but was told again that anyone with a scooter over 50 cc had to take the highway portion of the test to get the full licence. The official I spoke to did tell me that examiners had the discretion of conducting the highway portion on a section of highway that has a speed limit of at least 80 kilometres, but only if there is a ministry-approved route near the testing centre and only if a rider asks for the modification.

But most riders don’t know to ask; many remain both confused and frustrated with the system. Danute, a rider in Hamilton told me she uses her 125 cc Yamaha to get everywhere in that city. “It puts a smile on my face even on bad days,” she said. Her top speed is 80 kilometres an hour. Anything faster and she feels as though even a pebble would throw her off.  She was contemplating getting her full licence when I spoke to but couldn’t imagine taking her scooter on the 401, where she “could be sucked under a truck or blown into a ditch” or risk annoying motorists by driving too slow. She hadn’t heard of the examiner’s discretionary authority and planned on booking her test in a nearby smaller city with less-travelled highway. “It’s the oddest thing,” she said, “to sit around and have to figure how to do this the safest way.”

Another rider I spoke with owns both a motorcycle and a scooter. Bridget uses the motorcycle on

the highway and keeps the scooter for running errands in the city of Burlington. She has her full

licence but tried to get information for her son who returning to Canada and wanted a licence for

his scooter. After speaking with the ministry, the solution she cam up for her son was borrow a

more powerful scooter than his vintage Vespa so she could handle the highway speeds on his test.


“Laws haven’t been updated for scooters here,” she said. “It’s not like Florence or some

other European city. You have to work and figure your way around getting an M licence here.”

I ended up figuring another way to get my M licence, but it cost me $350, far more than the government $75 fee for the test. It’s a safety course approved by the government for motorcycles and scooters with engines of 100 to 230 cc that allows students to try the test after a day of safety training. The main advantage:  highway driving is tested on an expressway where the maximum speed is 80 k.

The course certainly wasn’t a waste of money. The instructor, Sharon, was a big woman with a big motorcycle who handed out good advice along with safety tips. “Scooters are small, even smaller than motorcycles,” she said. “Riders have to be vigilant.” Throughout the day, she insisted on absolute attention to riding in blocking positions, constantly checking mirrors and consciously looking both ways before making any kind of move.

“In Canada, we are behind the time when it comes to scooters,” Sharon told me. In Europe where lane splitting is common (the practice is illegal here) “cars are accustomed to scooters. Drivers there watch out for scooters and realize that lane splitting keeps traffic moving faster.”

But Sharon also pushed for fearlessness. “You own the road, but you have to claim it,” she said.

Nowhere was that more evident than on the highway where hesitating is just about as deadly

as speed. For most of the riders taking the test that day, it was their first time on an expressway;

some said it would be their last. Riding in the rain on the expressway felt okay - in fact even  a

little exhilirating, but I've never gone back. I have the licence now and that's enough.

The whole process was actually more complicated than I’ve described but at least I’m now finished with the crazy system. As I drove the other day on the 401 ensconced in my car, listening to my radio, wishing I could be on my scooter, I knew what’s crazier is that I now have a licence which legally allows me to get on a big Harley - if I had a death wish – and head out on any highway in Ontario. What kind of system is that?

Here's a link to a good course in Southern Ontario: http://www.ridertraining.ca/

Scooters and the Art of Compromise

When I was a teenager, I remember, we ate Sunday dinner at one in the afternoon. On warm spring days, the front door would be open and we could hear the sounds from the highway that ran in front of our house.

It was a time for me of waiting and  feeling - as teenagers stuck with their families often feel - like the rest of the world was passing me by. I was the last child at home, the youngest daughter of the town's high school principal. I couldn't wait to leave that small town, couldn't wait to go to the city, to university, to become myself.

There was one sound I remember most from those spring dinners. It was the roar of a motorcycle as it cruised along the open stretch of highway. It was the sound of freedom, of boys who could leave their house whenever they wanted and ride with the wind in the face where ever they wished to go.

I knew girls who rode on the backs of bikes, who disappeared up the nearby escarpment and left school nine months later. I didn't want to be them. I wanted to ride the bike myself, preferably in a direction away from my hometown. In those moments as the whine of the bike rose and fell outside our house it seemed the perfect answer.

And then time, as it does, passed. The road I followed included all the usual rites of passages: school, first job, marriage, child.  It also had its share of bumps: career change, divorce, deaths. In all those years, even when I could have, I never bought a motorcycle or tried to ride one. I never knew a two-stroke from a four-stroke, couldn't get through the maleness and the mechanics of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. But I guess I talked about learning to ride often enough that one Christmas my daughter bought me a miniature silver Harley motorcycle with a clock in. I don't know if she realised her gift reminded me that time was running out. Maybe she did. She and my husband kept asking me when I was going to do it, when I was going to try to learn to ride motorcycle. I think as much out of embarrassment as anything else I finally signed up for a course.

So nearly ten years ago I found myself on an asphalt parking lot during a heat wave with a bunch of guys in their twenties out to get their motorcycle licences at a safety course that would convince insurance companies they weren’t reckless idiots. There were others like me there for the three-day session, but I liked the energy and fearlessness of the young guys who were as kind to me as they would be to their mothers. I swaggered a little like them when we walked to the practice bikes.

Only I wasn't one of them. During one of my first rides I panicked. Turned the throttle too far and braked to stop myself. They guys were impressed with my wheelie. Not me. I dropped the bike and scraped my knee. And realised two things: I liked the fact I'd arrived at this point in my life with no broken bones and I didn’t want to go out of my way to change that situation.  Some of the guys fell too. The difference was they laughed it off and got back on the seat faster than you could say Harley Davidson. It's called fearlessness. And I knew I lacked it.

I hoped the instructor would give me an out and tell me I was such a hopeless case that I should stop then and there. Instead, he bandaged my knee and said: "You can ride. You just need to blah, blah, blah." I don't actually remember the rest of his sentence. It was just the casual way he said, "you can ride," that earned him a spot in my heart and made me get back on the bike.

That same instructor - a big guy with one of those huge Harley cruisers - told us that there are two kinds of bikers: those who have dropped their bikes and those who hadn't yet. Now that I was in the first category, I felt luck was on my side and I did make some progress that day.  But fear was still my greatest enemy. We were told to look where we wanted to go in order to make a turn or follow a curve. But I couldn't stop thinking about the throttle, the gears, the brakes and whether I knew what to do with them to follow what now seems like simple advice.

I fell again and this time my knee hurt. I hobbled through the rest of the day and by the time I got home my knee had ballooned to a watery red mess.  "Don't be disappointed," I told my daughter. "But I'm not going back. I can't do it." She accepted my decision with grace and sympathy.

By morning, though, I felt like an ass, an ass making a bad parental example. I wound an elastic bandage around my knee and did go back. I didn't fall that day but I rode too slowly, thought too much and failed the test. I had to wait weeks for my knee to heal - I had broken the sac of fluid around the kneecap that protects it from impact and perhaps stupidity as well - before I could retake the test. Two tests later, I had my intermediate motorcycle licence.

So that meant I had to have a bike. Right? Right! I bought a small Suzuki cruiser. 250 cc. A lady's bike. It was a beautiful blue and had a wonderful name: Marauder. I pictured myself getting out of the city, cruising on the back roads. Only I never really got the hang of it, never really got over my fear that I would fall again. The pavement was just too close and too real. I took the bike out Sunday mornings - early - and messed around at changing gears and leaning into curves. There were moments of sheer pleasure when I had the roads to myself but, as soon as the traffic started up, I wanted nothing more than to head home. It seemed like I'd never be comfortable enough to ride the bike to work or even get it out of the city. I stored my bike that first winter thinking I’d get the hang of it in the spring.

Then over the winter I looked where I wanted to go and turned the corner.  I thought about how I wanted to be healthy enough to travel when I get to retirement age; to dig in the earth, to walk for hours if I feel like it. Conquering the motorcycle just wasn't as important to me as those things were,
wasn't worth the risk. If I had to let something go it would be a girlhood fantasy. After all I had left my town, had moved into the wider world, had had adventures - just not on a motorcycle.

Still, I couldn't quite do it, couldn't quite give up on that dream of sailing down the road with the wind in my face. So I came up with compromise. A middle-aged female compromise. A philosophy of two-wheeled motorised vehicles that suited me.

The next summer I ignored the imaginary jeers from the twenty-something guys I heard in my head and traded my motorcycle for a scooter. No gears. No clutch. No choke. Automatic (such a beautiful word). A Yamaha. 125 cc. A beautiful cherry red with the ridiculous name of Vino which was supposed to, I guess, make me think I was riding a Vespa to my villa in Italy where a glass of Chianta waited for me on the terrace. No marauding to be done.

I picked my scooter up during a Friday rush hour and I rode it home. Rode it home. In rush hour. Through traffic. At the first red light I had a moment of panic. What if I stalled it, what if I didn't gear down in time? But all I had to do was stop and move forward when the light turned green. I just had to ride and I could do that. My instructor had told me so.

In the first two months I put more mileage on the scooter than I ever had on the bike and learned to practice the fearlessness of driving surrounded by cars and trucks.

I can't say I am without regrets. I still see motorcycles and feel a twinge of failure. But mostly I feel okay about it. Life has a way of putting obstacles in our way and the skill is in going around them. In finding the path. In learning that compromise is not always a dirty word.  

Now, when I ride through the city with the gold light of sunrise still on the buildings I feel fortunate to be alive and to have come this far in life with much of my spirit in tack. And, even at fifty k's through city streets the wind whistles, the engine purrs and I lean into the curves and the turns. Watching where I go.

Why Scooter Girl?

This may seem like an odd blog theme for someone who's always considered herself a serious journalist. But as I try to figure out what to do with my life now, I find I am looking more to my personal passions and sometimes my passions are fun.

I love scooters. I love driving my Yamaha Vino on the streets of my city and I love watching scooters whenever I travel...whether in India, Italy, Spain or Vietnam. The scooter culture that exists in other countries is something I envy.

So, can I sustain a blog about an over-50 woman who loves her scooter and everything about scooters? We'll see. I can already imagine entries aobut how I came to the scooter...with a painful realization along the way that I've have to let go of my girlhood dream of riding a motorcycle on country roads because I'd left it too late in life...the joy of the first scooter ride...the determined women I've met through my scooter...the wonderful scooter culture of Vietnam, not to mention riding a scooter through the traffic anarchy of a Vietnamese city. But the journalist in me is not dead yet. I want to write about the crazy licensing systems for scooters in Canada and how the scooter has changed the lives of rural women in countries like Vietnam, and the cheaper models made by companies like Honda and Yamaha for the third-world markets. But let me be clear, I will not be reviewing scooters or equipment (except when I find something I love.) There are lots of sites that do that by people with far more technical savvy than I'll ever possess. (I will provide links though to sites I find useful.)

And there will be pictures. My other passion is photography. I have lots to learn but on a recent trip to Vietnam, I played with a fast shutter speed to freeze the motion and with a slow shutter speed and a panning technique to capture one scooter in the blur of others.

Even though I'm well past a girl, I chose the title because if reminds me of a retro wind-up toy my husband bought me in Spain. It's called Scooter Girl. Mine is a green tin scooter with a straight-backed tin women in black pants, an orange sweater and orange and white striped socks. Her tin blonde hair is sculpted as though it is blowing in the wind. Blowing in the wind is what it's all about. So in honour of her, I chose this title. Besides, when I first took motorcycle lessons, people kept saying to me: "so you're going to be a motorcycle chick." It made me bristle. To me, motorcycle chicks were the girls in high school who rode on the back of guys' motorcycles. Riding alone is also what it's all about. I'd rather be Scooter Girl than Motorcycle Chick.

Who do I think will read this? I don't know. I hope other who've discovered the joy and convenience of scooters will. I've love to hear from women in other countries. And although I've put my dream of motorcycles to bed, I'd love to hear from women who ride big bikes. I'm in awe of you.

So here's to an open road and a well-tuned bike.

Oh, and I am a writer, a freelancer, so please if you want to use anything from my site give me the credit, link me and note that all the photos I will put on this site are my own, not to be used without permission or payment.