I got my helmet, and spent the morning tooling around on my scooter, taking the back roads I’ve never seen around here — just a few blocks away from my house is the San Jose Rose Garden, and for the first time I wandered through the residential streets behind it discovering mansions and houses that would make Wisteria Lane look plain. Broad streets with large houses where the money just drips off the manicured lawn. Still, I prefer my smaller, more diverse and egalitarian neighborhood just on the other side of The Alameda.
The thing that struck me as I rode around was that it smelled so wonderful — the flowers and trees all blooming, leaving a scent in the air that I never discovered in a car.
I went about 7 miles, and now I’m topping it off with a few cents of electricity while I have lunch. Just a note for those of you interested in an Oxygen Lepton E: it’s very noisy when charging, because a fan turns on to cool it — a noisy fan. Since it is living in my garage, I don’t care much, although I will probably use a lamp timer so that it doesn’t sit there overnight with the fan on — it only takes a few hours to charge completely.
Next stop: a hardware store so I can find some string. Yes, string. You see, the scooter has two keys — one is a regular key to start it, and the other is a little security dongle that is required to start the motor. The slots for each are on opposite sides, so they can’t be put on a single keychain; I want some string or a chain to attach them to that is long enough to let them both be used while strung together.
And this is my big plan for the rest of the day.
Yeah, one thing you’ll notice when you ride around on a motorbike of one type or another is smells. Even the bad ones are good if only because they’re new again.