The Fun of a 250cc Scooter: What Can I Do on a Scooter?
Like many others his age, Dave has announced that he is going to buy a motorcycle. His dreams are of a big, honkin’ bike that roars with thyroidal attitude when you kick start it and then rumbles down the street without fear and without discretion. Poor Dave. He should have gotten a clue when his wife tittered at his announcement, but there he went, right on down to the bike shop. When the man behind the counter stopped laughing, he mentioned that Dave might be happier with this: this being a 250cc scooter. The man did not mean any offense, it’s just that some people belong on a motorcycle and some people are just more fitted to a scooter. Dave is a scooter dude.
So, he storms out and stews for a day or two. Then, Dave gives up and goes back and buys a shiny red 250cc scooter and comes buzzing up to his home, happier than he has been for several days. Okay, so it’s not a motorcycle, but it does make the wind whip through his hair like it did when he was a child and he rode his bike down the steepest street in town and never once thought about falling off and breaking his head open. He soon finds out a few things about the scooter and his neighborhood.
When he drives to work in his car, he is often focused on the road or what he is about to do when he gets to the office that he does not see the little details. Out on his shiny red 250cc scooter though, he can take the time to notice that the people two doors done have installed a new, emerald green front door and that the people at the end of the block are in the process of getting a swimming pool. He sees the flowers and the yard ornaments that people have spent hours putting in front of their homes, some of them for the very first time. He takes the time to wave at the little kids that are playing in the front lawns or side yards. He takes the time to wave at his neighbors, people he has lived next to for years but has rarely taken the time to notice at all.
He rode down to the dock on his scooter, right out to the sand, parked and then walked out to the water’s edge. He skimmed a few rocks, waiting until he found the perfect flattie and getting that baby to dance four, big looping steps across the glistening water before going back to his 250cc scooter to head home. On the way back, he does one more thing that he has not done in ages it seems, a simple thing, but it still feels like the key that unlocks his past for him. Dave stops on the pier and gets an ice cream cone, savoring every drip while sitting on the scooter he once resisted, the scooter he now calls “Freedom.”
