brainsnorkel.com

I’m currently in Denver. On assignment!

As my family and I will be here for some time, and we only have the one car, we’ve discussed getting something like a motor scooter for me to ride to work. A moped. Something like a Vespa.

J & I had a discussion about how cheap they are to run and how good they are for the environment.

I used to have one way back when I was in school, so I know the thrill of filling up each week with 90 cents worth of petrol. The slings and arrows of riding a moped in rural and regional Australia just helped to make me stronger. Don’t taunt me again, I could be pushed too far like a moped-riding John Rambo.

Getting a moped seemed like an idea worth pursuing. A potential problem we both noted was that neither of us had ever seen a motor scooter in the USA. We speculated that they’re considered too gay, or French, or both. Maybe, and this was the conclusion we snarkily agreed to, they’re unpatriotic in their frugal fuel use (notwithstanding the huge numbers of hybrids now on the roads).

As if to illustrate why having only one vehicle was a problem that needed solving, on Friday I was supposed to be picked up from work at 4:30 but I had a meeting that ran late. I lost track of time and I had no mobile phone. J waited for me in the car park for a while and then drove home with the kids to wait for my call. It wasn’t for another hour that I got in touch with her to arrange a pickup. We arranged a new time and I headed down to the car park to catch some late afternoon outdoors.

In the car park was the first motor scooter I had seen in America. We were proven wrong, Americans do care about fuel usage and don’t care about looking French, gay, or Italian!

I waited for 15 minutes for J to arrive, and noticed something odd. The back wheel of the scooter was slowly rotating, as if moved by the breeze. I got closer and realized that the engine had been left running.

When J arrived she said that she had seen it earlier when she came to pick me up and it had its engine on then as well. It had been running for 90 minutes or more.

Was this some form of effete fuel-wasting ceremony designed to exorcise perceived moped-gayness? Was it a French or Italian spy proving themselves to be American?

I could have ridden it away to rescue it into my laté-sipping life of looking like a felonious, gay, French-Italian, greenie, but I think I’ll just get a bicycle.