That Other Guy

Before I started scootering in the spring of 2007 I don't think I ever took notice of a scooter out on the roads.  Except for mopeds which I'd have recognized as glorified bicycles, I don't know that I ever consciously drew a distinction between a scooter and a motorcycle.  (Okay, we're not going to quibble here about how a scooter IS a motorcycle of specific design because I'll no more win this one than I will the one about how a Sousaphone is a specifically designed tuba rather than a distinct musical instrument.)  I mean, I knew that scooters existed, having been given a ride on one by a favorite uncle when I was probably of pre-school age, and I knew that scooters were used on certain honeymoon islands as a way to get around, but when one zipped by me and I gave it a cursory glance, I'm fairly certain that I never thought, Oh!  Look at that cool scooter!

Once you get on the other side of the handlebars, though, things change.  Now I could no more miss seeing another scooter out there than I could the tip of my own nose, and when I do spy one it's always with a full set of questions.  What kind of scooter is that?  What made that rider decide to get one?  Is it used for commuting, joy riding, or something else?  Why all the gear, or little of it?  I find myself wanting to stop the other rider just for the sake of chewing the fat about the joys of scootering, and to get "his story."

I guess this blog is "my story."  I'm not sure why I think a story needs to be told, but in spite of my long hiatuses here at times between posts, I find myself returning time after time to take up the "pen" again and to crank out some things that maybe others might find interesting.  The fact that there are other scooter riders out there who check in on me would suggest that we're all kind of curious about the other guy's story and not just isolated persons who happen to share the same mode of transportation.  There's something about being a scooter rider that transcends the machine itself.  There's a kind of brotherhood, even if it's a tacit one, formed by these two wheeled adventures of ours. 

(I was going to replace "brotherhood" with "fellowship" to try to be less sexist in there, but then I realized that "fellow" isn't any better than "brother."  I do lament a simpler time when we didn't feel the need to think like that because everybody except the militant few back then was "okay" with assigning masculine gendered terms to writing and speech when the actual gender was unknown.  Suffice it to say, that I mean nothing against the lady scooterists out there with whom I feel the same connection and bond as I do with the guys.)

I think, for dear want of much better terms, that it is cool, neat, interesting, and noteworthy that numbers of us feel the same way - that somehow putting our thoughts about scootering into print makes the experience of being a rider in some quantitative or qualitative ways inexplicably better.

To my fellow scooterists who do both, keep on riding and writing!