Beginnings and Endings

Although some days it doesn't seem like it because at times I tend to type all around some idea without ever making my thoughts coalesce so that they flow pleasingly and logically to make a definite discernible point, I often spend quite a bit of time in thinking about what I might write here before starting to crank anything out.  Today's post began with the simple notion that today might have been the last day on which I'll take to the scooter in shorts and a tee shirt.  The more I thought about it, though, it's really about the passing of another season, the changes that always sneak up on me as summer segues into early Fall, the thoughts of the impending season to follow during which my time off the scooter will be measured in weeks rather than days or hours.  But, with more thought I turned up the notion that much of what I write here seems to be about beginnings or endings because the in-betweens are just kind of marking time toward the start or finish of something.

I'm fairly certain that that conclusion came only after I saw this picture that I took this afternoon in anticipation of this post.  There I was atop a hill where one can look down upon a nearby neighborhood like the Grinch surveying his domain from the top of Mt. Crumpet, and as I ran into place in time for the timer on the camera to do its thing I didn't give any conscious thought about smiling or otherwise "arranging" my face for the picture. 

My face rarely "lies" in a photo, and even when it does those well versed in seeing through my facial expressions can't be fooled.  I trotted over to the scooter as the timer counted down and then the shutter snapped to reveal precisely what I seemed to be feeling at the moment.  My face doesn't show thoughts about putting away the tee shirts and shorts.  Its glumness reflects that whole mess of putting away the summer and getting ready, as if one really can get ready, for the in-betweens of winter that won't be far off.

Today was an ending - one of the things that gets written about.  No doubt, unless I croak (as my Daddy said for too many years before he finally did nearly three years ago) before April or May I'll be waiting for that fresh beginning of a new riding season.  Oh, I'll probably get many good rides in before I park the BV under the deck with a sigh of resignation and hook up the trickle charger, but not without the "gearing up" that cooler weather requires.  I'll sorely miss just putting on a pair of shoes and sailing out the door to hop onto my trusty steed clad in the tee shirt and shorts that I sport almost every minute from June through sometime in September every year.

And just in case my misery wasn't apparent enough in the first picture, I just had to shoot another by the colorful gazebo that's been in my pictures many times in the course of writing this blog as a featured prop to herald the coming of a summer or putting it away.  Nope.  I don't look happy.

Even the scooter itself seems to be looking longingly for next summer to get here.  Can you blame it?

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!

An Important Retraction

It was only 27 days ago when I recommended here the consumption of a certain snack item as often as possible.  Of course then I was still 15 days away from landing my sorry ass in the hospital for the stay that lasted over a week and confirmed everything I'd been fearing for years about my state of health and the need to improve it.

I wrote this, to be exact:  The next time you're out riding and riding all day and finding the need for something to eat and drink coming on like there might be no tomorrow, just do this.  Grab a Tasty-Klair, a little jug of chocolate milk, and head for the closest Cracker Barrel porch.  Your whole body will thank you for it.  Well, thank me, maybe, for this sage advice. 

DON'T DO IT!

I was out today at the supermarket looking for some bland, tasteless things that I might make for breakfast from now on, and I happened upon the TastyKake items where I had to take pause just to look at the nutrition facts on my beloved Tasty-Klair.  I nearly fell over when I read the chart on the back of the box.

Yes!  They would be 80 mg of cholesterol in that humble 4 oz. snack!  Just what every new heart patient wants to see on one of his favorite snacks.  And with 320 mg of sodium, they're just as "healthy."

Now, everybody says when one is diagnosed with heart disease and starts on that long walk of lifestyle change, "Oh, it's okay to cheat every now and then."  Maybe that's true to some degree.  But cheating doesn't have to include something THIS disturbingly high in the bad things.  I do believe I've eaten my last Tasty-Klair ever.

Those who know me best will be seeing less of this view of me to some degree.  The daily walks have been feeling super heart-wise, but not on my legs, most specifically my right knee the joint of which needs to be replaced.

Luckily, some of my favorite forms of having fun won't be any different at all!  Thank God that the persons who regularly accompany me out in public have gotten so used to me that when I hand them the camera and strike a fetching pose such as this one, I don't even get the old roll of the eyes that I used to get.  They obediently take the shots I want just as I've trained them to do!

There are plenty of smiles like this one left inside me.  The changes I'm making feel good to me now, but it's a damned shame that I had to wait till it was nearly too late to make them to get my act together and my ass in gear.

And, I'm already praying for lots of good weathered scooter days ahead before I'm posting pictures of the Piaggio's front tire frozen into the ice under the deck where I park it.  I've had Thanksgiving days, as well as Christmases, and New Year days on which I was able to take the bike out for a holiday ride.  I'm hoping with all my might that I might get all three of them this year without frozen anything on the ground and with relatively balmy temperatures for their time of year.

You know what, though?  No matter how those days come and go, I'll take them!  I'll take them and be as happy with them as I know I'm going to be already, simply because I'll still be around on them to celebrate!

I might never walk past the Tasty-Klairs without a melancholy sigh, but any number of those sighs will pass and I'll be just fine with that.