The idea of the 50-cc scooter was thrown out quickly as the speed limit on the road to Pyrgos is 60 kph (haha, believe 80-90 and you better get out of the way). Now consider that the top speed on the 50-cc scooter is, at best, 60 kph. Taking that scooter out there isn't just asking for death, it's begging for it.
There are two primary reasons for getting the scoot. The first is to hop back and forth to Pyrgos to get to the supermarket. There is a market marginally within walking distance (i.e. about a kilometer or so from here) but it's also marginally supplied. If you're going to get the stuff you really need to put some meals together, you've got to go to Pyrgos. The second reason for scooting is that Olympia is not far away and there's so much coolness in it that cruise ships stop in here most days and this is the low season. In high season, six or seven may be docked here at one time.
The Vespa is an additional €500 and that hurts but that's a whole lot less pain than getting scraped off the highway again. (I did check out cars but even a beat-down Fiat would have been €2000. No way.)
(Ed: Scraped off again?)
Don't get me started on my motorcycle crash stories. It's worse than hearing an old woman talking about her operations. (Actually I'm thinking of a relatively-young woman back on Hosea Avenue in Cincinnati and she was notorious for regaling everyone she met about her latest surgery. All the kids in the neighborhood wondered how they could possibly find more places on her to cut and yet she was still spry enough to get around the neighborhood talking endlessly of her surgical horrors.)
So the Vespa looks like the move once I get past one large boatload of bureaucracy to buy it. For one, you must have an identifiable source of income and be able to prove it or, well, don't come. The unemployment rate here is well over 25% so coming into the country with your hand out is a very bad idea.
The bike is clean and runs well and the comedy part is that it has a windshield. Man, I've never had a bike with a windshield in my life! But, what the hell, it's a Vespa and it's even got those panels on each side so your footsies don't get too cold.
There's an even better comedy part, tho: it has an automatic transmission. Whoa! I really did laugh out loud when Harry told me about that. I had asked him where they hid the shifter and that's when he said it didn't need one. So it's got a windshield and an automatic transmission. Tell me this isn't a speedball! And I thought riding a Harley was stylin'!
Here's a brief history that will show quite well why I should not get this scooter. This one is a Kawasaki on Daytona Beach and it's one of the few I did not crash.
This one is a Honda 350 Street Scrambler and it was one pretty bike. I rode it quite a bit and, amazingly enough, didn't crack it up too much. (I skipped over a Kawasaki 90 and a Yamaha 250 dirt bike in-between this and the beach bike)
Here's a Honda 500 and Lotho was riding by this time so he liked running around on it too. This is the only bike that neither of us ever piled into anything. It was pretty much of a warthog but it was funny leaning it down for corners as leaning far enough would result in clipping the foot peg on the road. This would cause the rear wheel to raise up, pick up some RPMs, and give you a little goose when it came back down again.
The bandages are from crashing a different Honda but I still had this one and, damaged or not, I was determined to ride. As you may have guessed, common sense was not a high priority with me.
This is the 750 Honda that went into a speed wobble on I-71 and resulted in the most spectacular of my many crashes. It stopped traffic in both directions on a six-lane highway!
This is a Harley Sportster, my all-time favorite, and this is the last picture before a car ate it. The problem with a car eating it is that I was on it at the time.
The reason this picture is so grainy is that the crash made it to the newspaper and this is a copy of the page. You can see that beautiful Harley all bent-up and smashed on one side of the car and me all bent-up and smashed on the other. It was the other guy's fault but that's irrelevant to the First Biker Law: don't let the bastards hit you.
And here's the glorious result of that crash. The only part of me that still worked was my right arm and the smile is because they've got me so hammered on drugs that I would have been amused by elephant jokes. But, what the hell, I had a pretty good suntan so I looked pretty in surgery!
So there you have multiple reasons why I should never think of a two-wheeled vehicle ever again. Oh sure, I'm going to listen.
There are two primary reasons for getting the scoot. The first is to hop back and forth to Pyrgos to get to the supermarket. There is a market marginally within walking distance (i.e. about a kilometer or so from here) but it's also marginally supplied. If you're going to get the stuff you really need to put some meals together, you've got to go to Pyrgos. The second reason for scooting is that Olympia is not far away and there's so much coolness in it that cruise ships stop in here most days and this is the low season. In high season, six or seven may be docked here at one time.
The Vespa is an additional €500 and that hurts but that's a whole lot less pain than getting scraped off the highway again. (I did check out cars but even a beat-down Fiat would have been €2000. No way.)
(Ed: Scraped off again?)
Don't get me started on my motorcycle crash stories. It's worse than hearing an old woman talking about her operations. (Actually I'm thinking of a relatively-young woman back on Hosea Avenue in Cincinnati and she was notorious for regaling everyone she met about her latest surgery. All the kids in the neighborhood wondered how they could possibly find more places on her to cut and yet she was still spry enough to get around the neighborhood talking endlessly of her surgical horrors.)
So the Vespa looks like the move once I get past one large boatload of bureaucracy to buy it. For one, you must have an identifiable source of income and be able to prove it or, well, don't come. The unemployment rate here is well over 25% so coming into the country with your hand out is a very bad idea.
The bike is clean and runs well and the comedy part is that it has a windshield. Man, I've never had a bike with a windshield in my life! But, what the hell, it's a Vespa and it's even got those panels on each side so your footsies don't get too cold.
There's an even better comedy part, tho: it has an automatic transmission. Whoa! I really did laugh out loud when Harry told me about that. I had asked him where they hid the shifter and that's when he said it didn't need one. So it's got a windshield and an automatic transmission. Tell me this isn't a speedball! And I thought riding a Harley was stylin'!
Here's a brief history that will show quite well why I should not get this scooter. This one is a Kawasaki on Daytona Beach and it's one of the few I did not crash.
This one is a Honda 350 Street Scrambler and it was one pretty bike. I rode it quite a bit and, amazingly enough, didn't crack it up too much. (I skipped over a Kawasaki 90 and a Yamaha 250 dirt bike in-between this and the beach bike)
Here's a Honda 500 and Lotho was riding by this time so he liked running around on it too. This is the only bike that neither of us ever piled into anything. It was pretty much of a warthog but it was funny leaning it down for corners as leaning far enough would result in clipping the foot peg on the road. This would cause the rear wheel to raise up, pick up some RPMs, and give you a little goose when it came back down again.
The bandages are from crashing a different Honda but I still had this one and, damaged or not, I was determined to ride. As you may have guessed, common sense was not a high priority with me.
This is the 750 Honda that went into a speed wobble on I-71 and resulted in the most spectacular of my many crashes. It stopped traffic in both directions on a six-lane highway!
This is a Harley Sportster, my all-time favorite, and this is the last picture before a car ate it. The problem with a car eating it is that I was on it at the time.
The reason this picture is so grainy is that the crash made it to the newspaper and this is a copy of the page. You can see that beautiful Harley all bent-up and smashed on one side of the car and me all bent-up and smashed on the other. It was the other guy's fault but that's irrelevant to the First Biker Law: don't let the bastards hit you.
And here's the glorious result of that crash. The only part of me that still worked was my right arm and the smile is because they've got me so hammered on drugs that I would have been amused by elephant jokes. But, what the hell, I had a pretty good suntan so I looked pretty in surgery!
So there you have multiple reasons why I should never think of a two-wheeled vehicle ever again. Oh sure, I'm going to listen.
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