Back in the Saddle!

The weather has turned toward gorgeous, the scooter now has valid inspection and registration stickers, and I am back to riding!

Last Friday evening, I took off by myself for an hour-long ride around my area. It's been a while since I was on the bike, and I knew I needed to practice some skills again. I figured out the first skill to go is my turning skills. Had some trouble trusting the scooter and leaning into the turns and making them smoothly. It got better as I rode, though, so that's good.

It was fabulous to be out again. I rode from my house up through the area called Bon Air, which is full of Victorian-era houses. Before the turn of the 20th century, Bon Air was a place where Richmond city-dwellers went to get away from the city for a while and get some fresh air. There used to be a train station, and people would go out to their country houses by train to relax. It seems odd now, given that the outer limits of the city of Richmond is only a mile from the center of Bon Air -- it's not like people were going that far -- but I guess when your transportation is horse and carriage and train, even a few miles is far. Now, the center of Bon Air has a huge water tower:

I was riding too fast to take any pictures of the gorgeous Victorian houses, though, and there's no place to really stop along the road.

After getting through Bon Air, I crossed one of my most favorite bridges in Richmond. The Huguenot Bridge spans the James River at one of the best points for swimming and flatwater canoeing. The city is currently rebuilding the bridge, so there's lots more traffic and construction than I normally like.

I rode down to the park that runs along the river and took a few pictures. I love this place. The river is *right there* along the road. It floods sometimes, and the houses that are in this area are all built WAY up on a hill across the little road, but it is beautiful.

After that, I rode up near the entrance of the University of Richmond, where my husband will be starting school this summer.

And then I made my way home in the near-dark. This is the current price of gas in my area. Yikes! I'm glad I have the scooter for when I can go places by myself. There are a lot more scooters in the area these days, too. The price of gas is awful.

Look for my next post, hopefully later this evening, about the really fun morning my husband and I had riding around the city!

JOY = SCOOTERS

Joy truly is riding across the Huguenot Bridge on a gloriously sunny day and feeling like I'm riding my own personal rollercoaster....

....and being able to smell the roses and the honeysuckle and the freshly-cut grass as I roll on by...

...and feeling the wind through my riding jacket vents......

....and finding a parking space under a tree RIGHT in front of the shop you want to go into....

....and realizing your armored riding jacket folds up well enough to fit in your topcase...

...and realizing you are not as afraid as you anticipated you would be...

....and knowing that this kind of FUN -- the scootering FUN -- is so much more than you thought it would be.

On Target

Yeah, okay, so it's been a while since last I posted. I haven't been riding NEARLY as much as I should have been, unfortunately. Part of that was due to unfortunate allergy side-effects (vertigo! It's not just for pilots anymore!), some of it is due to my desire for wearing a skirt or shorts far outweighing the desire to suit up to scoot, and some of it is due to the inevitable need to schlep the kids around. Hard to strap a carseat on the scooter.

But, the Pumpkin Queen is still going strong!

She even has a friend, now that my husband is riding a new GZ250 in addition to working on his old '82 Honda Hawk.
(Incidentally, I took those two pictures one right after another in the evening....amazing what a difference ambient light and no flash makes!)

Today, though, I got to ride for a good chunk of the afternoon. I had to run some errands, and wanted to scoot by (literally) the hospital to visit a friend who's just had her first baby, and there was a local art show I wanted to check out. Two of those things are not kid-friendly, so after lunch, off I went.

It was sooo nice out today -- low 70's with plenty of sunshine -- but SOOOOO windy! Yikes. Still, I had a great time taking all the back roads to my destinations, to purposely avoid the four-lane divided highway major artery road.

It was my Target run, after the hospital visit and art show, that proved the most interesting. I had a number of items to obtain on my list, and I figured I'd grab a new plastic milk crate while I was in the store to bungee to my front rack to hold the purchases. Apparently, milk crates are passe now, since I could not find a single one! Bummer. No matter, I had bungees in my pet carrier.

Shopping completed, I took four bags out to the scoot to load up and drive home. I knew it, but I didn't fully grasp, just HOW MUCH STUFF you really can put on a scooter! Here's the lowdown:

In the pet carrier.....
-my really small purse
-a bottle of bubble bath
-two kid toothbrushes
-four ceramic bowls in their packaging

In the topcase...
-a magazine
-a small pack of diapers
-four salad plates in their cardboard packaging

In a bag hanging from the front hook...
-four small metal pails
-two kid sippy cups
-a tube of diaper cream
-assorted other stuff

And strapped to the front rack.....an eight-pound bag of cat food! (hey, the cat's gotta eat!)

Getting it home was a piece of cake. no problems with the load, and only a few funny looks from people coming toward me (it was the cat food, I know it).

Oh, and I had to scare the living hell out of some dumbass lady driving a Jeep Cherokee. She was turning across my roadspace in the parking lot, looking in all directions except the one she was driving in, and nearly ran right over me.

139dB of Stebel air horn took care of her. And I kept right on riding. :)

Have I mentioned I love my Buddy? Huh? Have I?

Spring has finally sprung!

Hooray for good riding weather, in which I can remove ALL the liners from my awesome jacket and go with all the zippers open!

I haven't been riding all week, because I either had to ferry the kids places, or my desire to wear a skirt was greater than the desire to maneuver the scoot out of the garage (thru the people door!). Also, it's time for it's first service (300 miles, baby!), and I was already past the 300-mile mark and didn't want to get too much further along before having the oil changed.

Yesterday afternoon and evening were trying. Allergies, a headache, total exhaustion for some reason, and non-napping preschoolers were conspiring to make ScooterMom a grumpy girl. I won't go into all the fun that two spunky and extremely smart little ones can cook up, but suffice it to say one was asking me if the Easter Bunny had come yet (ALL DAY!), and the other was turning our deck into a beach. Then came the full-contact egg dyeing, which consisted of one of them eating a dye tablet, and then spilling a cup of dye on the table, and the other clamoring to take eggs in and out of the dye. Ack!

After the munchkins went to bed, my husband suggested I go for a ride. I am very glad that I did. I wasn't really aware of the head- and soul-clearing ability of a good evening bike ride until I went out last night. Whew!

First, I conquered one hesitancy: gassing up at a gas station. I'd been warned about being careful with the pressure in the hoses, watching out for spray when filling the teeny tank, and up to now, I'd been filling the scoot from a 5gal gas can we have in the garage. Not anymore! I successfully (and carefully) put a bit less than a gallon in the tank with no spillage or spray! I don't think I've ever spent this little at a gas pump, not even in 1998, when gas was $0.87/ gallon! (ah, the good old days!)


After that little victory, I rode off to my favorite local de-stressing place -- Barnes and Noble Books. A chai Frappucino, a bunch of jewelry-making magazines and a couple of Easter basket gifts, and I was better. A bonus was that I FINALLY figured out how to open the !@#$% topcase on my bike! I've only had it for about a month, and even though Chelsea showed me how to open and close and lock it, I could NOT do it. And hey, there's all KINDS of room in that thing! Woo!

Riding home in the dark, the wind blowing through my jacket and my helmet, I thought I could really ride MUCH longer. Probably in the dark is not the time to try out a new route, but I sure thought about it. Maybe after the oil change and service, and after I get the new super-bright awesome headlamp installed, I can venture further afield.

It sure is nice to get out and ride, though.