Life on two wheels, the scoot commute

Who cares?

2012-01-30T12:16:00.004-05:00

In the beginning I blogged knowing that no one was out there reading.

I felt that if just a few people found my blog, and that I helped them with some scooter commuting challenge or question, I would have performed a public service, returning the favour other bloggers had done for me. Paying it forward, so to speak.

Then at some point, several months later, there were some readers out there. Then some people actually went to the trouble of subscribing to my posts. Still later, some fellow moto-bloggers found me. Then I got a few followers.

Pretty soon, I got traffic. Not a lot of traffic. Kind of like on a side street, off main street, in a small town, in the boonies.

Now I feel that I have some blogger friends. What's a blogger friend? I consider someone a blogger friend if, should they come to town, I would happily lend them my Vespa for a few days, and consider it an honor if they took me up on the offer.

As all of this was going on, I was checking my stats in the blogger dashboard. At first a couple of times a month, then weekly, then daily, and now... well you can see where this is going.

I think I need to go back to daily, then weekly... Basically that little stick figure needs to sit down and smell the flowers while he's still in the foothills.

I'm curious as to what my fellow bloggers think about this, or indeed whether they think about this.

Hiatus: for readers only

2012-01-22T20:14:00.000-05:00

I started the installation of Hot Grips heated grips today.

It's an ambitious project, so it's going to take me a while to complete, and it's also going to take some time and patience to produce a decent project report.

So I'll be working hard behind the scenes here at the Scoot Commute, but readers will have to be patient waiting for the next post.

There's only so much a blogger and amateur mechanic can handle in his spare time.

Oh well... anticipation is half the fun.

Enjoy the reader's hiatus!

Here at last!

2012-01-19T06:15:00.016-05:00

Hot Grips, that is!

Now the fun can begin.

With a big thank you to the team at Hot Grips and the nice folks at Lockitt.com who thoughtfully enclosed a couple of treats to sweeten the experience. One for each heated grip.

Net {silenced}

2012-01-18T09:38:00.001-05:00

Winter blues? Take a hike! Buy a Vespa!

2012-01-13T15:09:00.001-05:00

Here's the deal. It's finally full-blown, snow-down-your-collar, spin-your-wheels, trudge-along, winter.

Plus, I'm fat. Really, fat? Judge for yourself: 30 lbs to lose.

As part of my new diet, in addition to eating "right", and watching what I eat, I'm walking. About 45-50 minutes a day. That's where the taking a hike thing comes in.

In Montreal, we have miles and miles of underground pedestrian walkways and lots and lots of stairs, if you care to avoid escalators. It takes about 50 minutes of brisk walking to go from the northwest corner of the underground where I work, to the northeast corner at the other extreme. It's like a giant "U", just like that, in fact. Though the "U" is hard to see on the highly stylized, not-to-scale "R-E-S-O" map posted here and there in the underground.

Here's the map of the underground city, and a link to a PDF map. It's huge. What better way to get the exercise I need?

While I was taking my daily walk today, I bought a vintage Vespa. A nice winter white vintage Vespa. So fitting.

Just the trinket to park on my desk.

To remind me of the 2012 riding season that each day brings closer.

Hot choice

2012-01-08T21:08:00.000-05:00

After quite a bit of research and sober deliberation I have come to a couple of decisions.

The first decision is to stay with my LX150 for a third season, resisting the temptation to upgrade to a Vespa GTS.

With that decision behind me, installing heated grips on my LX150 became an obvious next choice.

I considered two alternatives: either Oxford heated grips or Hot Grips heated grips.

The Oxford heated grips are from a UK-based supplier and they are manufactured in Asia. They come standard with a variable electronic controller that includes automatic shutoff if the scooter battery drains down to 11 volts or so. The electronic controller also has the advantage of managing the load on the battery since at lower settings, the controller actually reduces the amps consumed to heat the grips.

The Hot Grips model on the other hand is manufactured in the USA. They come standard with a three position high-low-off switch that doesn't manage the electricity budget as well as an electronic controller. An American made electronic controller is however available as an added cost option.

I read reports of reliability issues with the Oxford controller, and mounting that controller on the Vespa, due to the controller's bulky exo-skeleton type housing, while it would work well on the typical motorcycle, wouldn't be very elegant on a Vespa, unless I mounted it in the glove box. Mounting it there would make adjusting the heat a challenge, even at stop lights.

The Hot Grips optional Warm & Safe heat-troller electronic control on the other hand lends itself to mounting on the Vespa's dashboard quite elegantly where the controller will be easy to adjust even during a ride.

The final element weighing in the decision is that there won't be any import duty issues with the American made Hot Grips product as a result of the North American Free Trade Zone.

So that's it! It's Hot Grips for David's Vespa! I placed the order with Lockitt.com, a motorcycle accessories distributor recommended by the manufacturer. Hot Grips doesn't ship directly to Canada since it's a 50 minute return trip to the post office from the plant in Plainfield New Hampshire.

I should add that when I ran into some issues when I attempted to place the order on Hot Grips' website, and e-mailed the manufacturer, on Saturday evening, I got responses to my questions and the recommendation to order from Lockitt.com from Jim Hollander at Hot Grips at 10:00 p.m. Now that's service!

Now all I have to do is wait for the package in the mail.

Don't you love waiting for stuff that's coming in the mail? I do. There's that element of anticipation that just brings out my inner child.

I can understand how some people become addicted to online shopping.

Happy New Year!!

2011-12-31T23:58:00.000-05:00

Wishing all readers a happy and healthy 2012.

ICE

2011-12-31T09:17:00.004-05:00

Dar suggested that it was a good idea to have an ICE entry in your cell phone (In Case of Emergency contact and vital information). My nephew had mentioned the same thing over dinner the other night.

If you have an Iphone, and if, like me, you must keep it locked to satisfy a corporate security policy, neither the ICE entry in your contacts or the ICE app (yes Virginia, there's an app for that) will be accessible should that emergency arise.

In an interesting twist, my wife lost her phone in the Aventura Mall here in Florida just a few days ago. We were able to lock it remotely using the Icloud "locate my Iphone" feature after I posted a bunch of "Lost Iphone: if found, please call (XXX) XXX-XXXX" text messages to the phone. The text messages did the trick and the phone was returned to us by a good Samaritan finder (also a Canadian). Curiously, the Icloud lock and locate feature only kicked in after we retrieved the phone, and then wouldn't let us unlock the phone, necessitating a trip to the Apple store to restore the phone. Kind of cool, kind of not.

If I had read Dar's post earlier, I might have done the following trick to my wife's Iphone and avoided the whole ICloud ordeal.

Here's a work around you can set up on your Iphone in seconds.

Use the Notes app to create an ICE entry, take a screen shot of it (hold the top on button and simultaneously press the home button) then set the screen shot as wallpaper for the lock screen.

Problem solved.

This is the easiest New Year's resolution to make and keep. Do this now, Iphone people.

I took the plunge!

2011-12-30T18:43:00.000-05:00

I am now the very happy owner of a GoPro Hero HD point of view camera, and am very pleased with the purchase.

There is no scooter to ride here in South Florida. But did I mention the sunshine and the pool?

Ahhhhh.... the perfect antidote for all the hard work the fall had in store for me.

Holiday spirit

2011-12-14T21:29:00.000-05:00

Nothing says "here come the holidays" more than a vintage Vespa sidecar rig with all the trimmings.

Things are still nuts at the office. There's no time for a longer post.

This gorgeous Vespa has been a fixture in a clothes boutique in the Place Ville Marie mall for more than a year now. I've taken a picture of it in the past but I'm not sure that I've posted it here.

It will have to do as a holiday decoration for the ScootCommute until I have the time to post something more substantial, such as responding to Dar's challenge to post on the theme of 5 local road trips and dream trip challenge. If you've got a scooter or motorcycle blog, take a look at the challenge and consider joining in on the fun.

I'll get around to it eventually, maybe on the weekend.

In the meantime, spread the holiday cheer folks!

An ounce of prevention

2011-12-05T21:04:00.002-05:00

Putting my Vespa up for its annual hibernation is a breeze this year, thanks to the Modern Vespa forum.

Last year I removed the battery and brought it into the house to put it on the battery tender. That's a chore.

As part of last year's winter projects I upgraded the ground line from the battery that powers my Stebel horn and accessory outlet in the glove box.

Once I had the bike all opened up, I also followed the excellent advice from forum member Danny*h, and added a separate 10 amp fused positive and negative line direct from the battery. That new line terminates in a 2 pin trailer plug that hangs just a tad below the left cowl.

I soldered a matching 2 pin plug onto my portable air compressor that I keep in the pet carrier. Now I can pump up my tires to fix a flat without worries of blowing the fuse for the horn or power outlet.

On Sunday I cut the alligator clamps off my battery tender and soldered on another 2 pin plug.

This year all I needed to do was plug the battery tender into the bike. No battery removal.

That left me with one remaining 2 pin plug but with the wrong (female) polarity. I added a couple of yellow butt crimp connectors to the leads from that plug, then"reversed" the polarity by putting red heat shrink tubing on the black lead, and black heat shrink tubing on the red lead.

Presto! Now I have a test point directly to the battery. All I need to do to check on the battery is plug in my test lead and plug the leads from my multimeter into the open ends of the butt connectors. That test lead will make it a snap to monitor battery condition once the heated grips are up and running.

Not trusting my technical writing skills, I have added 5,000 words worth of pictures below.

You will note that the Vespa LX parcel hook makes a perfect place to hang my Motomaster battery tender:

Multimeter connected to the test lead:

Close up of the 2 pin plug / test lead:

Battery tender connected to the Vespa:

How and Why I got into Motorbikes

2011-12-04T19:29:00.001-05:00

Gary France asked the following question this week on his blog Flies in Your Teeth:

"I have read a few motorcycling blogs recently that I haven't seen before. With almost all of them, I was left wondering how the authors of those blogs initially got into biking, and why?............ I would like to know your reasons, so if you want to participate in this, then write something on your own blog about 'How and Why I got into Motorbikes'."

I posted something like this when I started this blog. After reading the many blog posts inspired by Gary's post, I think it's the perfect time to revisit the topic. I'm hoping to answer Gary's question without covering exactly the same ground as in my first post. So here goes.

One of the most difficult things I have ever done to this day, was learning to ride a bicycle.

I did it on a brand new 24", candy-apple red, Raleigh coaster-brake bike that I got for my seventh birthday. I wanted that bike so badly. Somehow, in my mind, I figured that by some magic, I'd just hop on that bike and ride off. Reality intruded on that fantasy awfully fast.

The problem was that the bike was just too big for me. I could barely straddle the crossbar on tiptoes.

My first "ride" was with my dad holding the bike steady with his hand gripping the saddle from behind, as I wobbled along the driveway concentrating more on begging my father not to let go, than riding the bike.

I remember the frustration I felt, especially when the neighborhood kids who could ride were turning effortless circles and figure-eights in that driveway while I could barely go four dicey feet without my dad's guiding hand.

My parents got me training wheels, but I hated them because I had to choose between trying to ride properly, which was a mixed bag of feeling the promise of what riding a bicycle could be, and having a training wheel kick in and feeling that horrible lurch; or giving in to the training wheel on one side or the other and riding painfully down the street at an awkward lean with the training wheel making the sound of a defective shopping cart rolling downhill.

Curiously, I have no memory of an 'ah-ha' moment when the art of riding a two-wheeler finally clicked.

We soon moved to a brand-new house, in a brand-new development in the suburbs. All my brand-new friends and I quickly evolved into Evil Knievels. We tortured our bikes.

It started with jumping them off curbs; then slamming on the coaster brake to make dozens and dozens of unsightly J-shaped skid marks on the hot summer pavement; off-roading at breakneck speed along rutted farmer's paths and forest trails; even soaring off a seven foot berm over a sand pit, launching the bike off the ledge, dismounting in mid-air, leaving the bike to clatter into the sand, while we tucked and rolled trying not to meet up with it. We were nuts.

Those endless summers on two wheels, riding like maniacs for hours on end, made me one with my bike. To this day, I feel intuitively what a two-wheeler is, and is not, willing to do in any given situation.

Naturally we all fantasized what riding a motorcycle would be like. We used clothes pegs and baseball cards to imitate the sound of a growling Harley, and imagined what a sprung saddle and suspension would do for the ride.

By the time I graduated to a three-speed bike in my early teens, that Raleigh was one stripped down, beaten up, mean-looking ride, with at least one cross-threaded, half-stripped axle, and handlebars that could no longer be tightened quite right.

At the high school I attended, a handful of the older students had Vespas, Lambrettas and 50cc or 90cc Hondas. I spent countless recesses and lunch breaks drooling over those bikes. I watched those riders start their bikes up with a sure-footed kick, and swoop off campus. I can still hear the put-putting sound the Italian scooters made, idling before take-off.

The closest I got to actually riding a motorbike, was riding pillion on a white Vespa for short ride, and riding pillion for a still shorter ride on my cousin's Triumph Bonneville, while my mother scowled and fretted.

By the time I was in university I managed to convince my grandmother and my mother to buy me a Solex moped. That moped barely qualified as a moped. And yet I used that bike up, logging more miles than I can remember. It had some horrible features. The absence of suspension meant chronic broken spokes. I could never quite get the oil:gas mix right and I'd get powdery build up in the cylinder. And talk about a defective drive-train: the Solex is front wheel drive; the motor sits on a pivot over the front wheel and an abrasive roller rests on the wheel and drives it by simple friction. In the rain the roller looses traction slowing the bike, meaning that you get to enjoy the miserable wet ride in the rain even longer.

In the end, I could get the cylinder head off, clean out the residue, pop off a wheel, replace a few spokes, and take off on a weekend adventure in under 45 minutes. And in spite of all that grief, I loved that bike.

Fast forward more years than I care to count. It's August 2008, and I'm at a conference in Victoria, British Columbia, staying at the Empress Hotel. I have a Sunday to kill. I stroll down to the inner harbour in front of the hotel and notice scooter rentals. Could I do it? What if I break my neck?

I check out the price, and hang around watching people sail up, rent scooters and scoot off, with seemingly reckless abandon. I hem, I haw.

Viciously prodded and hounded by a gaggle of angels perched on my shoulder, I shake a finger at myself, and head back to the hotel. I sit in my room contemplating my computer, and the work I could get done. But that scooter is dancing in my mind, taunting me.

I finally give myself a monumental kick in the butt, and nervously set out for the scooter rental shack. It's difficult to resist the angels on my shoulders screaming at me to forget this stupidly risky scheme and get back to the safety of the Empress. I stand there, imaginary fingers in my ears, humming a brave tune to drown out the heaven-sent voices, waiting my turn, forcing myself to plod through the rental process.

Finally, the paperwork done, the credit card surrendered, the charge racked up, the time is upon me. I'm handed a helmet and led to the parking lot. I'm nervous. The angels are still screaming. I strap on the helmet.

The rental guy gives me the most cursory instruction in the art of scootering. "Insert the key here; turn it like this; make sure that this switch is in this position; now apply the brake; push that button" and the scooter coughs and sputters happily to life. Now the guy asks me if I know how to ride. "I'm really good with a bicycle" I say lamely. He looks at me, and a fleeting shadow of doubt whisps across his face.

"Let's see you ride straight over there" he says, pointing to the sea wall "then turn around and ride back to me". I nod like a dutiful student, gently twist the throttle and prudently make my way over the sea wall in a nice straight-ish line, trying to look jaunty and confident. The U-turn I manage to handle, haltingly, but at least there isn't any point when I'm going to lose control, or drop the bike. I ride back to the shack. I get a thumbs' up, and a nod, and the rental guy turns on his heels to serve another willing victim.

There I sit, astride the beast. Alone. Responsible. Almost free. Nervous. Alert. The angels are whimpering and trembling now, desperate, and bereft of hope. The end may be near.

The devil on my shoulder gives me a hearty whack on the back, a wink, and a devilish scowl. "Well done lad, now, let's get some lunch! Tally-Ho!"

I turn right on Government street and join the traffic. It's the first time I'm on two wheels and taking up a whole lane! I try to look cool and nonchalant. Don't get too close to the car in front. Easy on the throttle. Every second I am learning more about the scooter, and learning more about riding. It's all so new. Clearly, it's not really like riding a bike. But I'm not dead yet. Yay!!

I head over to Barb's Fish & Chips.

I pull into the parking lot, park the bike, pull it up on the stand, and turn off the motor. "How cool is that?" I say casually to the devil. He looks at me, nods knowingly and shoots me a devilish grin. The angels have abandoned me, nowhere to be seen or heard.

After a delicious lunch, I decide to head up the shore road.

Before leaving, I pause to snap a picture of my ride:

I spend the next three or four hours happily exploring the coast beyond Victoria. In my mind, the devil is casually wondering whether I could ride my steed all the way to Butchart Gardens.

I find myself on a quiet residential street, straddling the idling bike and studying my rumpled and woefully inadequate tourist map intently. I'm feeling like a real biker now. I no longer need the devil to egg me on.

I hear a female voice, "Can I help you?" it says. I look up and there is this gorgeous, impossibly fit, tanned, young woman, perched on a Tour de France, multi-speed bike, probably all carbon fiber, decked out in skin-tight, blinding, multi-hued, blue and white spandex, offering to help me find my way. "Hi" I say, trying to sound casual, virile and possibly attractive. " I'm not lost. I was thinking of riding to Butchart Gardens... how far is it from here?" I ask politely.

"You won't get there on that thing" she says with disdain bordering on ridicule and with a dismissive, deprecating tone. She kicks a pedal and in an instant, she's off, leaving me there, my ego deflating with a pathetic, mournful hiss.

I head back the way I came, the beautiful spandex wonder receding quickly from my consciousness, washed away by the pure bliss of riding that scooter.

Later that fall, my wife and I visit Paris and Barcelona, firsts for both of us.

Quite aside from the amazing experience of gobs of European culture and delight, I marveled at the two-wheel culture. Bicycles, Velibs, scooters, motorcycles, filling the streets, lining the sidewalks, students, young professionals, gray-haired men, executives in expensive suits, women in business atire, every single segment of society on two wheels.

Guess where that lesson led?

I suppose that if you're a follower of my posts, you already know the answer.

I think I'll make a point of revisiting this topic once a year or so. It's quite therapeutic to remember how I got here. Thanks Gary!

Now I'll go back to reading other posts of riding-bloggers' reminiscences. It's nice to find those unexpected common threads.

Preliminary semi-scientific conclusions

2011-12-01T17:48:00.002-05:00

If you're new here, this post won't make much sense unless you read the previous post, and be warned, that post might not make much sense at all.

Oh well! That's life, so here, in as coherent a fashion as I can muster, are my conclusions. I have the generous assistance of CircleBlue, BobSkoot and Brady Steffl, both on and off this blog, to thank for allowing me to get this far:

The Vespa LX 150 has a 12 volt electrical system that reliably (so far) generates at least 7.5 amps of electrical current at 3,000 RPM.
The total load of electrical bits and pieces that come with the stock Vespa LX 150 draw 7.27 amps.
That means that the Vespa LX 150 is designed to operate with a mere 0.23 amps left over to charge the battery.
The normal running electrical draw of the stock Vespa LX 150 is 3.85 amps.
Oxford heated handlebar grips consume 3.6 amps on average.
The normal running electrical draw of the Vespa LX 150 with Oxford heated grips in operation will be 7.45 amps, leaving 0.5 amps of electrical head room.
That 'head room' means that the Vespa LX 150's electrical system is able to deliver all the power needed to run the scooter, and run the heated grips, without drawing additional current from the battery.
The battery in the Vespa LX 150 is a 12 volt 9 A-h lead acid battery with a charging rate of 0.9 amps.
The trickle charging rate for the Vespa LX 150 battery is 0.03 amps. This means that a charging rate of 0.03 amps is sufficient to keep the battery topped up if it's got a full charge.
With the Oxford heated grips running, the battery won't be draining, and there will even be 0.05 amps available for trickle charging the battery, which is more than the 0.03 amp trickle charging requirement for the battery.

My conclusion is that the Oxford heated grips work with the Vespa LX 150, but it's theoretically tight in terms of the electrical budget.

I think that in a real-world application, for the way that I run my Vespa in the course of a one hour commute each way to work, the Oxford heated grips will do just fine, and that the electrical budget won't be nearly as strained as the analysis to date would show.

For instance, I would expect either to run them at the low range of the settings from the beginning to the end of the commute, or wait until I feel a little chilled, and then run them at a higher setting only until I get the chill out.

Running the grips at 30% capacity will consume 1.08 amps of current, increasing the head room to 2.57 amps left to charge the battery, which is only 1.08 amps less than the stock bike's excess capacity, and a lot more current than the 0.9 amp normal charging rate of the battery. Running the grips on the highest setting for the coldest twenty minutes of the commute would yield a similar result leaving 2.46 amps of headroom.

The worst case scenario would be running the grips on high from beginning to end of the commute. In that case, there are times when the bike would be idling and producing less than the 7.5 amps of maximum current, and it is likely that for those portions of the commute there would a power deficit that would be draining the battery.

After a morning commute with that kind of brutal punishment, I still think that what battery drain would have occurred have still have been marginal and that the bike could start up for the evening commute. After a similar evening commute, plugging in the battery tender at home would top up the battery and set the bike up for another such brutal commute the next morning.

What I don't think that the bike could handle would be a long distance cold weather trip with the grips running on high morning to night. Although, even then, the likelihood is that the bike would be mostly running at high RPMs and the battery might just hold up fine. As long as the high beam wasn't also on, and the GPS wasn't hooked up... and that's not likely to happen.

If I make that kind of trip, it'll be a mid-summer adventure.

Making friends with Alessandro Volta, James Watt, and André-Marie Ampère

2011-11-27T19:47:00.002-05:00

If I were an engineer, or a particle physicist, I would be qualified to tackle the laws of the universe.

As some of you may know, I am a lawyer. That means that I am only licensed to handle man-made laws. That's why I'm pretty sure there's no law that says I can't dabble in the laws of physics.

That is all the more true if the experiment I contemplate involves the more or less inconsequential, microscopic, minuscule corner of the universe in the dark, tiny places inside my Vespa. Unless I manage to do something with the Vespa's electrical system that causes a black hole to form, or that creates a teensy bit of anti-matter, life as you and I know it will probably snake on into the future pretty much as we expect.

This puzzle-post is the first tentative dip of my right big toe into the most complex yet of my Vespa LX 150 modifications.

There will be more posts as I venture down into this rabbit hole, and be forewarned, I may yet decide to stop in my tracks and head off in the direction of trading up to a Vespa GTS of one variety or another. Only time and this blog will tell.

For now, you will find below the bits and pieces of the puzzle as they lie helter skelter in my lawyer's brain, ill-equipped as it is for this journey [Ed.: when you see entries like this, it's me, making a snarky comment]:

+ = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + =

Oxford grips draw up to 4 amps (source: Oxford web site, user manual).

The pair of heated grips draws an average 3.6 amps when in operation. Each grip can draw up to a maximum of 2 amps, so that means 4 amps of total draw at the maximum heat setting, of 28 to 30 watts. (source: Oxford web site, user manual) [Ed.: that's a math or physics mistake on Oxford's part. In a 12 volt system, 3.6 amps is 43.2 watts and 4 amps is 48 watts.]

The Oxford electronic control automatically shuts off the grips to protect the battery from excessive discharge. The shutoff point is 11.5 volts (source: Oxford web site, user manual).

+ = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + =

"The battery capacity that battery manufacturers print on a battery is usually the product of 20 hours multiplied by the maximum constant current that a new battery can supply for 20 hours at 68 F° (20 C°), down to a predetermined terminal voltage per cell. A battery rated at 100 A·h will deliver 5 A over a 20 hour period at room temperature." (source: Wikipedia)

+ = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + =

"There are only a few amps of excess alternator capacity on an LX150 to charge the battery above what is necessary to power the stock lighting. One 35-watt driving light uses 3 amps. You do the math." (source: ModernVespa.com - "12 lamps on 1 LX" - comment posted by SilverStreak on the thread posted by another MV member, Sunday, October 17, 2010)

+ = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + =

"You cannot convert watts to amps, since watts are power and amps are coulombs per second (like converting gallons to miles). HOWEVER, if you have at least least two of the following three: amps, volts and watts then the missing one can be calculated. Since watts are amps multiplied by volts, there is a simple relationship between them.

However, In some engineering disciplines the volts are more or less fixed, for example in house wiring, automotive wiring, or telephone wiring. In these limited fields technicians often have charts that relate amps to watts and this has caused some confusion. What these charts should be titled is "conversion of amps to watts at a fixed voltage of 110 volts" or "conversion of watts to amps at 13.8 volts," etc."

[...]

"The Following Equations can be used to convert between amps, volts, and watts.

(source: www.powerstream.com/amps-watts.htm)

+ = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + =

"Re: Heated grips?

pdxvespa wrote:

Has anyone installed heated grips? More to the point, can the electrical systems of the ET/LX/GT handle the extra load? And if so, what does the installation involve.....?

phr3d answered:

1) Nope

2) Do you have specs on one?

I can do the math to verify. The regulated output at 3000 RPM is 7.5 A <----- Haynes is wrong here. I can't find it in my Workshop manual, so guessing 7.5 since it is fused at that. The Typhoon 125 puts out 8.5 A, so should be close.

Stock Battery is 9 a-H

Full Load:

Side Lamps 5 W
Brake    21 W
Turn    2 X 10 W (we'll assume you won't indicate both directions, but still 2 for front and rear)
Plates    5 W
Inst/Warn 1.2 W
Headlight 35 W

87.2 Watts /12 V = 7.27

Normal Running Load:

Side Lamps 5 W
Plates 5 W
Inst/Warn 1.2 W
Headlight 35 W

46.2 Watts /12 V = 3.85

So at 7.5 Amp out put at 2000 rpm (guessing this, see above). We have 0.23 Amps to spare under close to full load, and 3.65 under "normal". Hope I didn't miss anything.

3) I would take it to the battery, inline fuse it for whatever the Grip warmer is rated at. Relay it some something that only turns on when the engine is running.

Edit: Forgot it should be 2 x 10 W for turn signals because of front and back. Seems close to being in a drain situations."

(source: ModernVespa.com - "Re: heated grips" - posted by phr3d on November 13, 2005)

+ = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + =

Vespa OEM battery specifications:

12 Volts
9 Amp Hour @10 hr rate
0.9 Ah Charge Current
130 CCA

(source: BatteryMart.com - Vespa LX150)

+ = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + =

"Charging rate
Charging rates for a trickle charge are very low. For example, if the normal capacity of a battery is C (ampere-hours), the battery may be designed to be discharged at a rate of C/8 or an 8-hour rate. The recharge rate may be at the C/8 rate or as fast as C/2 for some types of battery. A float or trickle charge might be as low as C/300 (a 300-hour discharge rate) to overcome the self-discharge. Allowable trickle charging rates must conform to the battery manufacturer's recommendations.
For a 12 V 60 Ah battery a C/300 rate would mean 60 A / 300 = 0,20 A = 200 mA"
(source: Wikipedia - Trickle charging)

+ = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + = + =

To sleep, perchance to dream

2011-11-23T22:03:00.000-05:00

Well, the consolation prizes are:

The wonder that the first snowfall of the winter season always inspires.
Christmas morning is in sight.
I managed to keep the scoot commute rolling to within two commutes of winter's onslaught.
Once winter gets going, each day brings the 2012 scoot commute one day closer.

T'is the season to be modding...

2011-11-20T19:54:00.001-05:00

With the 2011 riding season all but in the history books, what's left for a dedicated scooter commuter to do?

I think you know the answer!

Yup! It's nearly open season on Vespa modding!!

So here's my wish list (in no particular order) for this season of plotting, hunting, thinking, wrenching, browsing, drooling, ordering, waiting, thinking, planning, installing, testing, and project reporting:

Purchase a new Cuppini windshield (to be cut down just barely below eye level
Sew my 2010 ModernVespa patch on my BMW Airflow jacket
Purchase and install heated grips at last, either Oxford or Hot Grips. If they work on Keith's Symba, they should do just fine on my Vespa, as long as I install an electronic control unit to manage the electrical consumption
Install some nice shiny bar ends to go with the heated grips (I'm hoping it's an option with the Vespa LX handlebars)
Purchase a GoPro HD video camera
Replace all the Velcro on my Corazzo 5.0 riding jacket

As I think of other cool winter projects I'll add to the list!

Nibbles for the kaffee klatsch

2011-11-19T17:46:00.003-05:00

Sorry, no fresh pictures with this post, for a couple of reasons.

First off, things are crazy hectic at this time of year in the office and every minute is counted, including extra minutes during my commute. Secondly, fighting the cold at this time of year means two pairs of gloves, which is my tactic this year. A thin pair of merino wool glove liners and a pair of Icon gauntlets. So stopping to shoot pictures requires a minute or so more, and it's sad to say, but it really is a minute I don't have.

It was cold enough on Friday morning (-1C / 30F) that I had no choice other than to stop to pull on my rain jacket after a few miles to add a wind proof layer. I have enough cold weather riding experience now to know how much exposure to the cold is going to be too much.

It was my turn to pick up nibbles for the Friday morning office kaffee klatsch. My fingers were tingling with cold when I stopped at Banette, a French bakery franchise on Sherbrooke Street in NDG. The real borough name is a mouthful, so English-speaking Montrealers eons ago shortened Notre Dame de Grace to "NDG". We are fond of that here. We used to live in TMR (Town of Mount-Royal) and my brother in law used to live in DDO (Dollard Des Ormeaux). In the east end of the Island there is RDP (Rivière des Prairies). There are probably other examples of this inclination of ours to truncate the places we live, but I've already digressed enough.

16 miles, half of that at 60mph, had taken its toll by the time I got to NDG. And yet everything else was nice and warm, just cold tingly fingers. Not too shabby. As any rider will tell you, it's all about the gear.

I took a few minutes to warm my bands on the headlight before going into the shop.

10 minutes later and I was on my way with my treats, with nice warm fingers. You know you're OK if your fingers warm up and recover from the cold quickly.

I know, I know, you're counting the minutes wasted (putting on the rain jacket, warming my fingers, ten minutes in the shop...) and you're thinking that I could have snapped at least one picture! You'd be right. As I pulled back into traffic I remembered that I had forgotten to snap a picture of Banette which I was planning to do. Banette is a special place because it's not a Canadian or US franchise. It's a franchise from France, and it's the only Banette outlet outside of France. How cool is that?

So to make up for my forgetfulness, here is a shot of a Banette outlet in Paris, in the Latin Quarter that I took in 2008.

Their Montreal location is short on charm (at least it doesn't hold a candle to that location in Paris), but the pastries and croissants are incredible. If you're not from around here, and you find yourself in Montreal with time to kill, it's worth setting your sights on. Here's a shot of the Montreal Banette I found on the web. It's either a spring or fall shot because their tables aren't out, and there are no leaves on the trees.

So where was I... Oh yes, cold weather commuting tips.

If you chill your core, good luck. I did that on my last commute of the 2010 season and it took a space heater under my desk blasting away on high until noon to get the chill out of my body.

No such problem on Friday morning. Another minute or so warming my hands on the headlight (it just feels so good) and when I got up to my office I was just as comfortable as after a summer commute.

Easy peasy!

Too many questions; not nearly enough answers

2011-11-11T23:55:00.005-05:00

We have owned many cars, and driven even more. Some were just OK. Some were just plain terrible. Some were money pits at a time in our lives when money was hard to come by. Some were very useful. Some were pretty impractical. Some we were glad to be rid of. Some we still can't bear to part with.

And yet, after all those hundreds of thousands of miles, not one of those countless cars ever came close to giving me the pleasure I get from riding my Vespa.

What the heck is it? I'm still just going from A to B. It's just that on my Vespa it's much more like going from "Eh!" to "be". It's existential. And after more than 9,000 miles (closer to 9,300 miles) the ride still satisfies me to the core.

This morning was quite chilly. And yet the ride was still pure joy. Skiing is like that too. And riding a bike. Canoeing too.

So is it the skill required to travel this way that makes it so special?

Is it the freedom that riders often write and talk about? And just what is that freedom? How are you more free on two wheels than on four or more?

Is it the risk, and taking chances? Then why wear all the gear all the time?

Could it be the challenge and facing that challenge square on? Is it really that challenging?

Why are there so many motorcycle and scooter blogs? Maybe I'm seeing trees because I'm in the forest. Are car blogs similar to PTW blogs? I don't know. I do know that in all my years of owning cars I wasn't tempted even once to join a car discussion forum, or write a blog.

So many questions, so few answers.

All I know is that it's getting really cold. On the ride home I'm positive that there were occasional snow flakes streaking white arcs through my field of vision.

And yet I'm still in the saddle, occasionally grinning like a mad man, yet inscrutable behind my visor.

What the heck is it?

I'll just have to keep riding until I figure it out.

You know it's cold when...

2011-11-04T21:56:00.001-04:00

Capturing a shot like this on a Friday morning commute to work makes cold weather riding such a deeply satisfying experience.

Last season I packed in the scoot commute after a ride just below the freezing point. I had to pull into a McDonalds half way to the office to warm up over a cup of coffee. I was wearing ski mitts, and it just wasn't enough to deal with the windchill. When I got to the office I was probably well on my way to hypothermia.

This season I'm much better equipped. The windscreen makes a huge difference by keeping the wind off my hands. The lined riding pants and the layers under my riding jacket keep my core nice and warm. So basically the only effect left is cold fingers. That's manageable.

When I get off the bike in the underground garage, I pull off my gloves and place my hands on the headlight, one after the other. The residual warmth is just the ticket. Not too hot, just nice and toasty. By the time I get into my office and sit down to work, a hot mug of coffee is all I need to banish the rest of the chill in my hands.

The remaining issue is the condition of the roads. If there is a chance of precipitation that could become ice or frost on the road, that will spell the end of the 2011 scooter commuting season.

Time will tell, but, by any measure, the end is near. Repent!!

Boooooooooooooo!

2011-10-31T11:04:00.001-04:00

Happy Halloween!

This is T-H-E day for all those who ride orange Vespas! Get your spook on you guys!

Changing the exposure on today's image of Lake St-Louis in the morning reveals more of who was hanging out all night just for this occasion.

Ride safely, and spookily!

Hit the road Jack!

2011-10-30T19:44:00.000-04:00

Last week was full of work-related challenges. Everything went more or less as planned, but by the time the weekend rolled around, it sure was time for a break. Unfortunately, the work-related duties intruded well into the weekend.

On Sunday I had some minor chores to take care of. After lunch there was finally some me-time.

There is no better treat for me than hopping on my Vespa and hitting the road. Even if my name isn't Jack.

I headed north, determined to take it slow and easy. Take in the fall colors. Enjoy the late fall sunshine.

Continuing on my northward course, I took a nice quiet back road that cuts obliquely across the western tip of the island, finding its way to the shore of the Lake of Two Mountains.

When I got to the lake, I couldn't resist the temptation to check up on the memorial.

Sure enough, Jim Katz was up to his quiet literary philanthropy. Another copy of The Senneville Time Warp was discretely tucked into its special place on the monument. It's a treat for me to see it there. It makes my connection to the place much more meaningful. Thanks Jim.

Something caught my attention out on the lake, behind the memorial. Amazingly a couple of kite surfers were taking advantage of the stiff winds. I tried to snap a picture. I know that the kites are in the frame, but they blend in with the fall foliage and all but disappear.

From the memorial I began the ride home, westward along the shore.

On this trip there was no trace of summer left. Leaves rustling in the breeze, pumpkins on stoops, folks strolling in heavy jackets and bulky sweaters, the scent of log fires in the air.

Thinking of Steve Williams, I took the Vespa off-road, into a grassy field, and down to the water's edge.

A small flotilla of geese was resting by the shore bobbing in the choppy frigid water. Mother nature is good at camouflage, so you have to look carefully to see them.

Looking left and right, or south and north, the lake from this vantage point is just beautiful. Unfortunately it's just a question of time before someone snaps up this land for another McMansion.

I pushed on, slowly meandering homeward on Senneville road.

When I got to Ste-Anne de Bellevue, I went down to the boat ramp near the entrance to the lock that allows boaters to go from the Lake of Two Mountains into Lake St-Louis.

The boat slips at the marina are empty now, and many of the docks have been hauled ashore in preparation for winter's assault.

Further west it was the same story at the Baie d'Urfée Yacht Club. The sailboats are all on shore and ready to hibernate.

All that was left to do was push on home. The weather is supposed to be reasonably good this coming week, so the scoot commute is still on. But the clock is definitely ticking down to the close of the season.

There was a snow storm warning over the past couple of days for the US northeast. It's just a question of time before my world goes white too.

On a housekeeping note, a curious link seems to have developed between this blog and my Vespa. The odometer on the Vespa is at 10,385 miles, and the stats counter on the blog is at 10,023 pageviews, more or less neck and neck. With the winter hiatus looming, the blog is sure to pull way out in front of the Vespa.

Slowpoke

2011-10-27T22:56:00.002-04:00

A few posts ago, I was discussing the routes I take to commute to and from work. In that post I discussed the faster and fastest routes I take.

Before I began this adventure of riding a motor scooter to work as an alternative to more traditional means of commuting (click here to go the beginning), I found a route to get downtown that didn't involve any higher speed roads.

It's a reasonably direct route that's also one of the most scenic on the Island.

So much so, that from late spring, through summer and well into the fall, the portion of the route that follows the lake shore boasts a weekend parade of motorcycles, motor scooters, sports cars, vintage cars, bicycles, inline skates, skateboards, in fact any form of conveyance that in any way spells "fun".

Tonight that was the route I took for the ride home.

At this time of year, as my scooter commuting season draws slowly to a close, the scenic route is very different, particularly at night.

The sun has long set by the time I leave the office and roll out of the underground garage at 6:20 p.m. The air temperature is four degrees Celsius, 39 degrees Fahrenheit.

When I make it to the lake at around 6:50 p.m. it's dark, cold, and desolate, except for the occasional jogger or dog walker. The lake is defined by the lights along the shore. The distant lights on the far side of the lake twinkle and shimmer faintly in a bright line snaking along the horizon. Those on this side are bolder, more distinct, and set further apart. Here and there they reveal the shape of buildings and the features of parks along the route.

The lights are on in many of the houses I pass. Warm, cozy pools of light that give meaning to the word "home". Occasionally the aroma of a hardwood fire wafts past me on the way, conjuring a vision of an unseen hearth or wood burning stove.

Leaves litter the road here and there and I imagine some of them scattering in my wake. My arms feel cool as the cold slowly finds its way through the layers of my riding gear. My head and neck are warm, well protected by my full face helmet. I congratulate myself for getting the Corazzo Underhoody. Somehow it seals the gap between my collar and helmet. My legs and feet are warm and comfortable in my lined motorcycle pants and heavy hiking boots. My gauntlets seal my cuffs, but the assault of the fast-moving cold air still succeeds at chilling my fingers. I fantasize on and off about heated gloves or heated hand grips. The wide windshield that extends in front of the handgrips helps to ward off the cold air, but cold air is cold air, and the laws of thermodynamics are immutable.

Soon the commute ends as I hang a right onto my street and swoop left into the driveway. I pull off my right glove, reach into the pocket of my armored jacket and activate the garage door remote. The door rises and light spills onto the driveway, beckoning.

View route in a larger map
31.520 kilometers, or 19.586 miles, in just over 56 minutes.

A thread in the fabric of time

2011-10-21T18:03:00.002-04:00

I exchanged the following e-mail correspondence with Ms. Atmo Zakes of Senneville, concerning The Senneville Time Warp. This thread tells an interesting story that is an epilogue to that original post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 18, 2011

Hello Mr. Zakes,

Please forgive this brief intrusion.

I stumbled upon Hilary Hedges' book at the Senneville Memorial to the Battle of the Lake of Two Mountains.

An account of this encounter is on my blog.

I drove by the memorial on Sunday afternoon hoping to find the book and borrow it for a few hours to read the story, but someone else had beaten me to it, the book was gone.

I noticed that you assisted Ms. Hedges with the illustrations for the book.

Perhaps you might be able to pass this message along to Ms. Hedges. My curiosity is tweaked.

If there is an online text of the book I'd love to read it.

No worries. If I don't hear from you that's fine. I won't pester you with this.

Regards,

David Masse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello David Masse,

First things first, I am a woman...

This being said I am not feeling intruded upon ... on the contrary... in all the years we (my husband Jim and I) have been doing "this" (explanation later), it is the first time ever we have been contacted by someone (how did you get to me??) and we are thrilled... tickled pink really.

I read your account on the blog, and if I were a little more into blogging (which I am not at all), I would post this note there... as it is, I need to rely on you to take it from here.

I am going to answer as many as I can of your questions, and tell you the story of this book.

Let me start at the beginning.

The book was written and published in collaboration with Hilary (the writer), Jim (the editor) and I (the illustrator).

Hilary Hedges, a British born lady, was working for one of our neighbours and that is how I know her.

She reacted to the text on the memorial plaque you tried to visit and that is how the story was born.

Several neighbours, adults and children, were involved for staging the photographs and I also did some drawing for the maps and the other illustrations, including the cover.

It was good fun and we published the book ourselves in a small edition and sold some of them around here.

Shortly after the publication, Hilary returned to England (she didn't leave us her UK address or contact information) and we were left with way too many books.

So Jim came up with the idea to leave some at the memorial for people to find and read.

And that is what he is still doing and that is how you found the book there. This has been going on for years and that is why I am so thrilled to get some feedback!

You can tell me how to get in touch with you and you can get your own copy of the book.

Now to the memorial plaque and your speculations on what happened.

Here is what we know.

Over the last 20 years this plaque has disappeared three times already.

One time, Jim actually witnessed some bikers taking it down and was pretty sure that they came from Oka, and were doing this to protest against the so obvious discrimination on it. They apparently dumped it into the lake.This happened right around the time when there was unrest in Oka and lots of protests.

After a few months it was replaced by an identical plaque and, as before, that one went missing again after some time and was replaced once more.

That one did not last very long either and seems to have been stolen for the simple reason that it is valuable bronze.

It has been over two years since the last theft and it has not been replaced.

Maybe someone in the department that takes care of these historical sites, has clicked on to the fact, that it is really a slap in the face to the first nations people and should be worded quite differently, to say the least, and not be celebrated like this at all if we took this matter to heart a little!

Or it could be celebrated in the way the book does it.... (I must preserve the mystery, I am not giving away the plot!).

As there is no online version of the book, let me know how to get it to you and you could even pick it up.

Feel free to ask more questions. I will be glad to answer you.

Regards

Atmo Zakes and Jim Katz

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 19, 2011

Hello Ms. Zakes,

I should have taken more care and researched your given name. I would then have addressed you correctly.

Thank you so much for your reply.

I found your e-mail address by Googling your name.

The first thing I would like to do is to post your account on my blog. I will e-mail it to you first so that you can make comments. I will only post it with your permission. It could take me a week or so to write it up.

Secondly, I would be pleased to purchase two copies of the book. One to keep, and one to donate to the Beaconsfield public library. Once I have had the pleasure of reading the book I may post a better review of it on my blog.

I will be in touch to see how I can purchase the books. I will be out of town this weekend and a good part of next week.

If you can think of any information concerning Ms. Hedges that might be used to contact her, that would be appreciated.

Please tell Jim what a wonderful idea it was to leave books at the memorial. He should consider releasing the books as suggested by the book crossing project that one of my readers pointed out in a comment they posted. Here is the web address for the Book Crossing Project:http://www.bookcrossing.com/

I will be in touch.

Thanks once more.

David Masse

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 20, 2011

Hello David Masse,

I think originally the idea to leave the books like that came from the Book Crossing people....

I have forwarded your message to Jim and know he is as thrilled as I am to hear from you.

It would have been clearer to do it the Book Crossing way and you would have known right away that you could keep the book.

He just simplified the procedure and lost some clarity in the process.

Sorry... but without that, you might never have written to us!!

I love your idea to give one of the books to the library and will gladly donate it for them....

I did not know that it was that easy to find me and am happy you did.

I did try to find Hilary online but was not successful either.

You do have my permission to post my account on the blog and also make the language corrections that might be needed (I am not a native English speaker since I grew up in Berlin, Germany) and it will be fun to get to read it first too.

I just noticed that you have already included your street address... so why don't I pass by there and leave you the books simply in the mail box. That leaves you free to read it and deliver the copy to the library at your convenience.

You can even remind me of this should I forget.... ( I am getting on in age and sometimes my brain does not work as efficiently as it used to).

I will go get the books for you and be in touch.

Take care and bon Voyage!

Atmo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 23, 2011

Hello Atmo,

Can you tell me when the book was written?

Regards,

David

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

October 23, 2011

Hello David,

It was written over the winter of 1994 and illustrated in the spring of 1995 (you can find the info on the last page of the book).

There is an article with pictures I have from The Chronicle on the West Island Spotlight page that appeared on July 5th 1995 that gives a resumé of the book and invites people to the book launching party at our place.

You are welcome to come and read the article.

Atmo

Faster, and Fastest!

2011-10-19T21:56:00.000-04:00

Commuting to work on a Vespa is not about speed in the absolute macro sense of speed that we normally think of when we talk about the speed of things.

Speed certainly plays a very important role in the pure joy of commuting on a Vespa, but it's much more about speed at a micro level, as in a body in motion in space and time, and not so much about how fast you get to where you're going. It's the force of gravity acting on the bike, the centrifugal and centripetal forces that you feel and work with in sweeping turns. That kind of speed.

It's also about becoming accomplished in low speed sharp turns that you execute turning right from a full stop onto an intersecting street, when, through a mix of experience and skill, you first initiate, then control, then counteract, and ultimately throttle out of, the act of what I think of as letting the bike fall into the turn. It's hard for me to express, as you can see. For me it's closely related to the feeling you get in a canoe when you shoot rapids and you drop down into that first trough, or when you ski, and you crest a rise, in that first moment when you dip into the slope again.

Many of these pleasures are best savoured when you're not in a rush to get to your destination and can afford the luxury of the twisty by-ways.

Then again, as your skills increase, eventually you find your way onto expressways (assuming that your bike, like mine, is expressway-legal). Expressways offer a far different experience.

If commuting on the by-ways is more akin to performing aerobatics in a slow-moving bi-plane, getting anywhere on an expressway is more of an exercise in raw speed at the far edge of your Vespa's capacity, like flying that by-plane in a race.

On the expressway, attention to detail and your surroundings has to be especially sharp, the path you travel has to be carefully planned. At a mile-a-minute, the scene unfolds before you quickly. Changing lanes with a wide-open-throttle is a very graceful, powerful arc, with gentle pressure exerted on the bars determining your trajectory. It means consciously using the brake lever to flash your brake light, though the engine compression is actually doing all the braking you need. It means dividing your attention between what's happening in front of you, and what's going on behind.

Having that Admore Lighting LED brake and turn indicator unit that I installed under the rear lip of my topcase is comforting on the expressway.

Living where I do, I'm very fortunate to have a nice range of commuting options. Slow leisurely routes that twist and meander along the lakeshore; a fast, direct expressway route that gets me from home to office, or office to home in the quickest time, and a fast-ish hybrid route that offers a mix both expressway stretches and shortcuts on city streets where I can filter and lane-split with ease to shave 10 minutes or so off the leisurely commute. The variety is refreshing.

Here, for instance, is the faster hybrid route that I took yesterday morning on the way into the office:

View this route map in a larger map
31.256 kilometers, or 19.422 miles, in just over 50 minutes.

And here was my route home on the most direct, and fastest route:

View this route map in a larger map
28.256 kilometers, or 17.557 miles, in just over 28 minutes.

In a future post I'll show you my bread-and-butter leisurely route. Not necessarily better, just slower paced, longer in time and distance, but packed chock-a-block full of wonderful scenery.

Drawing to a close...

2011-10-17T21:35:00.000-04:00

This morning's weather was bordering on dismal.

Don't get me wrong, between now and Christmas morning, there will be truly dismal, dreary, cold, blustery, drizzly, sleet-ish, yucky days completely without redeeming qualities that, by comparison, will make this morning look pretty good.

There was a stiff wind straight off the lake making the Canadian flag at the Forest and Stream Club stand at a crisp right angle to the staff, bold and defiant, as if signaling to Canadians to buck up, get out the long-johns and down jackets, and march proudly and resolutely into the coming winter wonderland.

All of which means that scooter commuting will soon draw to a seasonal close for me and my trusty Vespa LX150.

Shows you what stuff I'm made of.

Down in equally cold and possibly even more snowy Pennsylvania, Steve Williams is rubbing his hands together with confident determination, looking forward to the start of his preferred Vespa riding season: winter.

Shows you what stern stuff Steve is made of.

Quietly, my mind is shifting, from planning rides, to indoor scooter pursuits.

Definitely a new windscreen in an attempt to arrive, finally, at windshield nirvana; a good detailed wash and wax; putting all my gear through the wash cycle; sewing a Modern Vespa 2010 patch on my BMW Airflow2 summer riding jacket; repairing the uncooperative Velcro closures on my Corazzo 5.0 jacket, maybe adding some snaps to the cuffs for even more secure closure at the wrists; cruising the used online Vespa GTS and MP3 ads for my next bike; checking out the market value of my Vespa LX150; daydreaming about a June-ish or July-ish scooter ride to Ogunquit, Maine; spending more time hanging out on the Modern Vespa forum and increasing my posting rate, and maybe, just maybe, if I'm really resourceful, earning another karma rondell; planning a late spring trip to Vancouver and meeting up with Bobskoot, and, if I'm really on the ball, renting a decent scoot for a ride; finding out more about The Senneville Time Warp and the missing Battle of the Lake of Two Mountains monument; hours sitting at the kitchen table, scissors, scalpel, glue and tweezers at hand, striving to complete my way-too-detailed paper vintage Vespa replica.

More will surely come to mind as the season narrows to a full stop.

I'll be ready.

The Senneville Time Warp

2011-10-10T21:03:00.009-04:00

That's the title of a book by Hilary Hedges that I came across in the most unusual way.

Thanksgiving weekend was nothing short of phenomenal. Our sons joined us, traveling from Vancouver and Toronto, and we had not one, but two turkey dinners with all the trimmings, one at home as a family with dear friends, and a second at my sister's with our two extended families.

That would have been enough to make for a fantastic long weekend.

But the weather, the weather, what can be said about the weather? It was summer! Not a late fall reprieve from the chill, but full-on, wipe your brow, squint your eyes, summer. Temperature in the high 20's (high seventies for those where Fahrenheit rules), blue skies, warm breezy days, all the way from Saturday through Monday. Never do I remember a Thanksgiving weekend like this.

On Monday afternoon, our out of town guests began to hit the road headed for home. After cleaning up the brunch dishes, I jumped on my Vespa for a joy ride out to Senneville.

The warm breezy afternoon; the lovely winding road out to Senneville along the lake shore; the company of motorcycles; other scooters (including a man on a Vespa GTS and a woman on an LX; I followed them for a quarter mile or so before they turned down a side road); vintage sports cars; once I got to Senneville, the sunshine-dappled country road; maple trees breaking into their fall colours providing a multi-coloured canopy; all combined to make the ride dreamy. This is the kind of experience that sells Vespas.

Was there anything that could have made this day better? Yes there was! But there was no way I could have imagined it.

My casual objective for my ride to Senneville was to check up on a historic monument that has gone missing. How does a historic monument go missing? I wish I knew. Vandals are the obvious culprits. But you would expect vandals to resort to spray paint, to deface the monument, not carry it off.

The monument in question is a bronze plaque measuring about two by three feet, mounted on a concrete slab framed by cast iron girders. It is off by the side of the road, surrounded by a wrought iron fence.

I came upon it many, many years ago. At the time I had a Solex moped. I had just written my last exam in my last year of undergrad. I had set off on a very long ride solo, with the objective of going around the western tip of the island. I had never done this before. It was the first time I had been to Senneville, the westernmost suburb on the Island of Montreal. That was how I stumbled upon the monument.

The plaque commemorated a skirmish between the colonists of New France and the Iroquois tribe of the native people. The engagement was the first counterattack by the colonists following the horrific Lachine massacre in August of 1689.

Billed as the Battle of the Lake of Two Mountains, the engagement was by a small force of 28 soldiers from the Montreal garrison against 22 Iroquois. The monument marks the place where the battle took place.

Having once stopped to read the plaque all those years ago, I have stopped by from time to time to visit that spot. It's kind of special to me because it was a surprise to find it in the first place, and that serendipitous find blended with its isolation on the Montreal shore of the Lake of Two Mountains lends a kind of magic to it, at least in my mind.

To add to the allure of the monument, at some time in the recent past, the bronze plaque has disappeared. The wrought iron fence marking the place is intact, as is the concrete wall where the plaque was mounted, but the plaque itself is nowhere to be seen.

It was bronze, so it couldn't have needed repair or restoration. Was it taken down because historians discredited the story it told? Given activism on the part of the native peoples in the recent past, did they make off with the plaque because the plaque commemorates a vicious act of war against native peoples? Did a history buff make off with it and is now hoarding it in his basement? Did aliens take it for further study or to place in a museum on their home planet?

Did I imagine the plaque to begin with? When something just disappears, you can begin to question your memory.

Riding a Vespa makes it easy to stop to investigate things. The road is very narrow by the monument and there is nowhere to park a car.

But there is plenty of room for a Vespa. So I pulled over right in front of the monument to take a closer look.

And that's when I found it.

Resting at the foot of the monument was a document in a zip lock polyethylene bag.

I switched off the motor, pulled off my helmet and gloves, plucked out my earplugs, put the Vespa up on its centre stand, and picked up the bag.

Inside the bag was Ms. Hedges' book, Senneville Time Warp. There was no time to sit and read the book. That might be the subject of another ride. I did snap some photos of this remarkable piece of ephemera though. I love ephemera. Surely that book in that bag will disappear, maybe even find its way to where the plaque is. Who knows?

The book is a fictional account of the battle, seen by the eyes of time-traveling kids, with the Iroquois as protagonists, I think. It's hard to tell when you only take five minutes or so to examine a book.

The particularly wonderful thing, is that there is a picture of the missing plaque in the book! How cool is that? Here is a photo, of the photo of the plaque, in the book:

So I wasn't imagining this all along.

I also took a close up of the picture in the book, hoping that when I got home I'd be able to read the inscription. As luck would have it, I was able to read it. It says (said? It may no longer exist, after all):

"The Battle of the Lake of Two Mountains

Following the Lachine massacre in August of 1689, the Iroquois continued to terrorize the Montreal area. In October, Governor Denonville sent out a scouting party of 28 under the Sieurs Dulhut and d’Ailleboust de Manthet which came upon a party of 22 Iroquois in the Lake of Two Mountains. In the mêlée that followed this surprise encounter, 18 Iroquois were killed, three taken prisoner while one swam to safety. This victory did much to restore the shaken confidence of the inhabitants.

Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada."

I carefully returned the book to the zip lock bag, took care to re-seal it, and placed it back at the foot of the monument exactly as I found it.

As soon as I got home I dove into Google. What more could I learn about the battle, the missing plaque, and Hilary Hedges and her book?

Well the monument has a web site. So that's a start.

And then, even more curiously, the only reference I could find to Senneville Time Warp was an entry on a Swedish web site (how weird is that?) where the title is misspelled.

Of course, as you might expect, there is no shortage of MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn pages for Hilary Hedges (or Hillary Hedges, but I'm guessing she didn't get her own first name wrong on the cover of her book). I'm sparing you those links. I don't have time in my busy life to figure out if any of them belong to the real Hilary Hedges of Senneville Time Warp fame, and you shouldn't either. If I'm wrong and you have taken the time to figure it out, please put up a post here and share your find.

Hilary Hedges, if you come across this page, please, please, please, post a comment to fill in the rest of this story.

Pretty cool for a Thanksgiving weekend, no?

Maybe one day I'll tell the tale of another disappearing monument from my college days: the modern granite monument to Dollard des Ormeaux in Carillon Quebec recreating the fateful stockade on the Long Sault along the Ottawa river where Dollard and his small band met their demise at the hands of the Iroquois during the same war between the French colonists and the native people of Canada. It's kind of Canada's Alamo story. At least that's the way it was told to us in grade school. Dollard supposedly lit a fuse in a powder keg, tried to heave it over the stockade wall at the attacking Iroquois, snagged a branch overhead, dropped the keg inside the stockade, and BOOOOM! That was supposedly the sorry end of Dollard and his men. The truth? Who knows what the truth was.

Unfortunately the native people were ill-matched not only in numbers and weaponry, but also in spin-doctoring. So all these accounts are mostly one-sided.

That's all for now.

Epilogue: There is more to this story. Interested? Check out the History Lessons page.

I couldn't resist

2011-10-07T10:52:00.001-04:00

As soon as I opened my Financial Post this morning my dragon red Vespa LX jumped off the page at me. The article citing Apple designs as among the most iconic the world has known is one of several tributes to Steve Jobs in today's edition of the Financial Post. In my humble opinion, they could have added my mid-life-crisis-red Miata to the top of the list as well.

But who am I to quibble? The Vespa LX topping the list made my day.

A peak behind the curtain

2011-10-07T06:47:00.001-04:00

Some of you have had problems posting comments.

I have tweaked the comment settings in the hope that the changes will make things easier. For instance, you shouldn't have to fuss with that Turing word-test thing designed to tell if you're a human and not a machine.

If many machines start commenting, particularly if they are complaining about the difficulty they're having figuring out how to ride a scooter they bought on Ebay, I may have to turn the word verification back on. [EDIT: there was indeed too much spam, so I turned the word verification back on.]

If you are experiencing any issues on the technical side of things, and you're not a machine, drop me a line, and I'll see what I can do to twiddle the levers behind the curtain to make the problem go away for you.

Going back behind the curtain now...

Milestone!

2011-10-06T20:48:00.000-04:00

I had to meander a little on side streets to capture this picture of my odometer at the momentous 10K milestone.

The Westmount Lookout

2011-10-05T19:57:00.000-04:00

I took a sandwich and a bottle of water up Mount Royal for lunch today.

Mount Royal defines Montreal. It sits alone and prominently on the south side of the Island, just northwest of the downtown core. It's a kind of camel-back mountain with a pass that traverses the mountain on a southeast-northwest axis. The southwestern peak belongs to the City of Westmount. The Westmount Lookout gives beautiful unrestricted views to the south including Montreal's skyline, and, on a clear day, the Adirondack Mountains in the United States.

There are sighting guides cast into the lookout's balustrade to help you identify the landmarks.

To be honest, I didn't know that there was a Mount Johnson within sight of Montreal. You learn something new every day.

Westmount is home to a good proportion of Montreal's well-heeled elite. The palatial homes of every type and description perch on the mountainside and compete for the views.

If you look carefully at the river in the preceding picture you can see the Victoria bridge, Montreal's first permanent link to the south shore, completed in the nineteenth century. Click here for my post on the Victoria Bridge.

A little further to the west, in the foreground, is Westmount Square, a group of buildings designed by famed Bauhaus architect Mies Van der Rohe. He also contributed a similar grouping of sleek black boxes to the Toronto skyline, and I am certain, to many other cities in the world.

Beyond Westmount Square, there is the Champlain bridge, our mainstay route to the south and New York State, about an hour's drive to the south.

Here's another peak at a multi-million dollar view.

Refreshed by the quick sightseeing lunch break. It's time to head back to the office.

This video shot as usual with my Iphone, allows you to come along for the ride. Better mute your speakers because I didn't delete the noisy windy soundtrack.

Morning in Pointe Claire

2011-10-04T12:49:00.001-04:00

The sun rises later now.

That means I need to use my Iphone in the morning to shed some light when I rummage through my sock drawer.

It also means I get to enjoy early sunrise views of the lake on my morning commute.

Case in point: the recent shot you see here is of the point that puts the "pointe" in Pointe Claire. The picture was taken from old Lakeshore road in Beaconsfield, just east of the Beaconsfield Yacht Club. I took the picture from the saddle with my Iphone using the Camera+ app.

I really like Camera+ because it gives you separate controls for focus and exposure, among other goodies.

Commuting in the fall

2011-10-01T16:18:00.003-04:00

Last week was very busy work-wise so this post is more of a historical account than I planned it to be.

It's difficult to believe that fall is here. Last Monday morning came with a hint of chill but by the time I rolled into the underground garage at the office, it felt like summer.

At lunchtime I took a good 50 minute walk. By that time it was truly summertime hot on Montreal's streets.

I meandered through the new entertainment district, the Quartier des Spectacles. It was there that I stumbled upon an exhibit of photographs taken from space by Guy Laliberté.

Many countries have space programs, including Canada.

Guy Laliberté, a fellow Quebecker, is a special case. He made up his own space program of one.

The Cirque du Soleil founder became mankind's first clown in space. He brought along clown noses for his space station comrades, but none of the astronauts chose to don them. Real astronauts don't clown around.

Guy took some stunning photos.

That's all I know about clowns in orbit.

Riding in the fall is no big deal. It's certainly nothing like space travel.

If you pick a nice day and you live where the foliage puts on riotous colours, it's a very pleasant feast for the senses.

Commuting on a Vespa in the fall is something completely different.

To do it well, and do it safely and enjoyably, requires discipline and good gear.

Good waterproof rain gear sitting in the pet carrier and ready to deploy is a first must have.

The next thing to consider is how well your scooter is equipped.

With the days getting shorter, an increasing number of commutes will be in darkness. I've added auxiliary rear running, brake and turn indicator lights.

I opted for an Admore Lighting mini light bar. It's a bar of very bright LEDs that combines all the lighting in a single unit. The turn indicators flash in a sequential pattern and the brake light modulates before coming on steadily. The Admore unit increases my visibility substantially. If you click on the link above for the 'Gear Posts', you'll see the project post that explains everything you need to know about the Admore unit and how I installed it.

My riding jacket (a Corazzo 5.0) has very prominent reflective stripes. My Tourmaster Caliber pants and Icon Patrol gauntlets also feature reflective material.

Cool fall weather makes for pleasant strolls in cardigans and light jackets. Cruising on a scooter calls the wind into play and that changes the equation substantially.

Without a windscreen that extends in front of your hands, and good winter gauntlets, the cold can thoroughly chill you. With those Icon gloves, my Corazzo Underhoody under my armored jacket, and the liner zipped into my armored pants, I'll be able to ride comfortably all the way through October.

As long as it doesn't snow. Then I'll be done for the season, and ready for the commuter train.

Milestone looming!

2011-09-30T23:15:00.005-04:00

I find it hard to believe. Yet it's plain to see that my dragon red Vespa will soon roll up to the 10,000 mile mark. All but 1,304 of those miles are mine.

I'm hoping to post a similar photo when that momentous event happens. I'll have to start paying close attention to the odometer.

It's been a busy week for me. I have a more substantial post in the works. This tid bit will have to do for now until I can pull this week's post together.

Pointe Claire Yacht Club

2011-09-23T15:15:00.001-04:00

Today's weather was glorious. Sunny, unseasonably warm, and just about as perfect a day as anyone could hope for.

I stopped briefly at the Pointe Claire Yacht Club this morning to admire the sailboats tethered to their moorings, waiting patiently for a weekend sail on the lake.

The mouth of the harbor and the lake beyond the breakwater were quiet, no sails to be seen.

Perhaps on my return home the slips will be empty and the flotilla will be out taking advantage of what could well turn out to be the last great sailing day of 2011.

Here's hoping this wonderful weather will hold for the weekend.

Crossing the canal

2011-09-13T20:32:00.001-04:00

This is something I do very often. Last year, I would have done it ten times in a week. This year I'm more adventurous, and my repertoire of routes has expanded, but I still take this bridge at least four times a week.

The Charlevoix bridge gets you from the south side of the Lachine Canal, to the north side. It's a good way to get across the canal.

If you prefer tunnels to bridges, there is also the Atwater tunnel a little further west that serves the same purpose. When I was a kid and we would take the Atwater tunnel on our way to visit my relatives on the south shore, my sisters and I would always bug my dad until he honked the horn in the tunnel. With the windows down in the summer you'd get the mad echoing of the horn that always made us giggle. I haven't gone that way on my Vespa. I'll have to do that before the season ends to see what a Stebel air horn sounds like in the Atwater tunnel.

Today both sides of the Lachine Canal are being re-developped with condos and lofts. The building you see in the picture above is a condominium loft development. The shores of the canal are a linear park with bicycle paths that take you from the old port downtown, all the way to the shores of Lake St-Louis in the west end. What was once a dismal and decaying industrial zone is now a really nice green space.

Here's a Google maps satellite view of the bridge and its surroundings.

The canal is open to pleasure craft and is the easiest way to take a motor boat from the lake to the port of Montreal. From there, in theory, you could sail for Europe.

You might have a shot at it in a decent sailboat, but first you'd have to lower the mast to get through the canal. Back in the 1960's when the canal was still a vital commercial waterway, all the bridges would open to allow the taller shipping to navigate the canal. Since pleasure boats don't need the extra clearance, the mechanisms have been dismantled and the bridges are all permanently fixed.

The Charlevoix bridge was a turntable bridge rather than a lift bridge like the Gauron bridge further west. If you venture under the bridge on the pedestrian path or the bike path, you can still see the turntable mechanism with some of its gears. None of it is in working order and it's obvious that some of the key ingredients are no longer in place.

The bridge deck, like many movable bridges, is a metal grid that you see pictured below. With the decommissioning of the turntable, portions of the grid were filled with concrete to make the ride more comfortable for people in cars, and presumably safer for bicycles.

If you ride a scooter or a motorcycle, you can choose to ride on the grid portion, or the concrete portion.

I used the grid portions all last year and early this year as practice for my assault on the Victoria bridge. For an account of that crossing and what it feels like to negotiate a long metal grid deck bridge at speed, click here.

Ray Bans©

2011-09-08T22:07:00.002-04:00

I love my 35 year old Ray Bans^©.

They're the Outdoorsman model, said my optometrist appreciatively. "They don't make them anymore" he said with the same fond, wistful look that a car buff might have talking about 1956 Corvettes or MG TDs. He felt bad for the hard wear I inflicted on them, so he meticulously cleaned off the accumulated grunge when he fitted my new lenses last week.

This morning the dismal weather we've been having began to clear. The sun finally made an appearance so I pulled into Stewart Hall to put on my shades.

Standing beside the Vespa, paces from the lake, I took a minute to absorb my surroundings. I felt blessed.

The freshness of the cool September morning air, the stately willow to my left, and the stillness of the lake made me want to linger, empty my mind for a spell, and just be.

I stood there surveying the scene, the air fragrant from the freshly mown lawn, enjoying the moment. I took a breath, then strolled closer to the water's edge. The only sound was the Vespa purring on its centre stand behind me.

When I got closer to the shore, I saw a couple of jet skis sitting on a boat-lift, close to shore behind a waterfront home on my right. The jet skis made a pretty picture, the yellow bonnets of their shrouds popping out in the pastel scene.

It was time to 'shake a leg' as my mother was fond of saying, so I shoved off and continued on my way to the office.

Memories of Expo 67

2011-09-07T21:09:00.002-04:00

Expo 67 was the 1967 World's Fair that was held in Montreal.

Montreal's mayor at the time, Jean Drapeau, had ambitious plans for Montreal's future. He single-handedly put Montreal on the world map, first with Expo 67, then with the 1976 summer Olympics.

His administration shepherded Montreal from city to metropolis: the 1960's and 70's in the run-up to the fair and the Olympics were frantic times. Incessant construction brought us soaring expressway interchanges and bridges, the Metro, Place des Arts, Place Ville Marie, Place Victoria, and the Olympic stadium. Those buildings and public works define Montreal today; they are prominent among the landmarks that are the signature of this city.

Political turmoil soon followed and the financial markets and institutions that gave Montreal its pre-eminent place in Canada soon fled to the relative peace and tranquility of Toronto.

Montreal eventually got over that economic hump, and growth returned early in the new millennium.

The challenge Montreal faces today is renewing all the infrastructure that was built in the 1960's and 70's. Bridges, tunnels, and those soaring expressway interchanges that were so daring and futuristic in the late 60's, are now falling apart bit by bit, and chunk by chunk, as the government scrambles to repair and renew.

One way to forget what the future wrought, is to take a trip back to those magical days of the late 60's.

While most of the fairgrounds were recycled for other uses, some landmarks remain.

My Vespa allows me the luxury of lunch-hour ventures. So I took off south through the downtown bustle, down to the port, past the Port Authority HQ, and headed to Ile Ste-Hélène, one of the two islands that made up the fair grounds.

To get to the island you can either take the Jacques Cartier bridge to the east, or the Pont de la Concorde which was the route I chose to take.

The Pont de la Concorde is one of the surviving Expo 67 landmarks. It's not a particularly inspiring bridge, but it is fairly long, and extremely wide. During Expo 67 the Pont de la Concorde, so named in honour of the motto of the City of Montreal Concordia salus, was one of the main gateways to the fair.

It's a challenge to get pictures of the bridge. Here's one taken from Ile Ste-Hélène.

Here's another taken from the Montreal side.

A light rail line was built to take fair goers over the fairly large distances between the city and the two islands given over to the fairgrounds. The double-tracked rail line ran down the center of the Pont de la Concorde. The remainder of the bridge's ample width accommodated throngs of pedestrians, me among them as a boy, wide-eyed with the wonder that was Expo 67.

One of the other signature landmarks so closely associated with Expo 67 is Habitat 67. When you head for the Pont de la Concorde, Habitat 67 is the building right before the bridge.

Habitat 67 was architect Moishe Safdie's daring concept of concrete modular apartments. I don't think that his vision actually ever got any real-world traction, other than that one concept project.

Today Habitat 67 is still futuristic, and is now all much sought-after condominiums, each with spectacular views of the river and the city skyline.

One of the other remaining landmarks has a second career as the Biosphere, now a museum on the environment. During Expo 67 it was the American pavilion. Designed by Buckminster Fuller it is a massive 200 foot high geodesic dome.

Like Seattle's Space Needle, Montreal's geodesic dome is a prominent 1960's tribute to a George Jetson future that hasn't quite materialized. Where the heck are those flying cars? I was really looking forward to those flying cars.

Mind you, if you buy a condo at Habitat 67, with a view of the Montreal skyline and of the Biosphere, you might begin to think that the Jetsons could be your next-door neighbours.

I can tell you that when you zip around town on a Vespa, and you glide through sweeping turns, you can't see the wheels under you, and it certainly feels like you could be skimming along on a wheel-less air scooter, or a Star Wars imperial speeder bike, or something like this:

With my photos all snapped, off I went back downtown to grab a quick bite before settling in for an afternoon at the office.

Here's a brief video showing the ride back to downtown from Ile Ste-Hélène over the Pont de la Concorde and past Habitat 67 which you'll see on the left after the bridge.

The ride home

2011-08-30T21:14:00.001-04:00

In the evening I rarely stop to take pictures.

The day's work has worn me down, and all I want to do is get home.

Don't misunderstand, the evening commute on my Vespa is something I look forward to. There is no better way for me to unwind than riding west along the Lachine Canal and then the lake shore all the way home.

Nevertheless, I'm much less inclined to take the time to snap photos, unless the scene is compelling.

This evening was one of those days.

The weather began to clear at noon and the day evolved into a perfect late summer day. Warm but not hot; a gentle breeze; clear blue sky punctuated by great big white voluptuous clouds.

In a word, a sailor's dream of a day.

No surprise then that the west island sailors were out in force by the time I got to Pointe Claire.

The only unfortunate part of this nice little story is that my Iphone was woefully inadequate to capture the beauty that made me interrupt my evening commute.

As you can see, I took several shots, playing with the exposure, hoping to get it just right. In the end I couldn't decide which was best, so I've posted them all.

It's a shame that the sailboats don't translate in the photos they way they appeared to me. It's the flotilla of boats that got me to pause to take these photos.

If you click on them you'll see them in a separate page of your browser. Depending on your operating system, you can zoom in until they fill the screen. Only then will you see what forced me to stop, if only briefly.

Irene's wake

2011-08-30T20:28:00.000-04:00

On Sunday the outer reaches of Hurricane Irene's scythes brought sporadic power failures, tore branches from trees, and littered the ground with leaves.

Monday's commute to work was chilly and windy but with clear blue skies.

I paused on the lake shore to snap a few pictures of Lake St-Louis, still pretty choppy from the high winds.

It would have been interesting to see the same scenes at the height of Sunday's storm.

Secure your helmet

2011-08-28T11:20:00.002-04:00

Eventually you will want to park your bike somewhere, and not want to schlep your helmet along for your stroll.

If you wear a half helmet or perhaps a three-quarter helmet, and if your pet carrier or top case are relatively empty, you can store your helmet there and it will be out of sight, protected from the elements, and reasonably secure.

If your helmet doesn't fit there, you'll need another strategy. Then again, maybe your helmet would fit there, but, like me, you carry other stuff in those places (rain suit, tool kit, portable air compressor, locks, digital camera, Sham-Wow, RAM mount accessories, monocular spy scope, ear plugs, flattened beer can (indispensable for soft ground to support the stand), air pressure gauge, Iphone charging cable, bungee net, GPS unit, re-usable shopping bags, sunglasses, velcro strap to compress the rear brake when the tire needs air, Icon waterproof gauntlets, and other sundries), and then you won't have room for a helmet, or much other stuff.

Sheesh, I sure do carry a lot of stuff. I'll have to have another listen to George Carlin's inspirational riff on 'stuff'.

You could just lock your helmet to the back wheel, like these brave souls do (I don't know them, I just parked next to them at the mall).

One plus of this strategy is that if a thief takes your scoot, those helmets will smack his leg with each turn of the stolen wheel.

But sitting on the ground like that seems a little inelegant, not to mention that you might get an earful of ants and spiders when you pop your lid back on.

If your helmet strap closes with a double D-ring, like a horse saddle cinch, Vespa's got you covered. It's easy to overlook this tiny feature under the saddle, just at the lip of the pet carrier, on the starboard side, at one'clock.

If you still can't spot it, this picture may well be worth a thousand more words.

Once you close the saddle, the helmet hangs securely from the chin strap.

You might think that the strategies I've covered so far are the only ones you'll need to secure your helmet.

Well, if your helmet is a full-face helmet, and if it has a nice ratchet closure, like mine, then you're still out of luck.

So what do I do?

I'm glad you asked. It took me a while to figure it out.

I picked up a short cable lock at the Montreal Harley Davidson + BMW dealer.

I close the chin-guard on my Nolan N102 helmet, thread the cable lock though the visor opening, pass the cable through the grab rail, and close the lock. I lower the visor, then sit the helmet down on the saddle, up against the topcase.

The nice thing about this strategy is that if it rains while you're off running errands, the inside of the helmet stays nice and dry.

Wait! You say you have an open-face helmet with a ratchet closure? You're still not out of luck. You need to get a T-bar thingy specially made for the Nolan ratchet closure helmet. You thread it through the ratchet, then slip the hole on the T-bar onto the under-seat helmet hook, and close the seat.

There you have it, six sure-fire strategies for securing your helmet, before you set off for a walk in the park.

Secrets of Île Perrot

2011-08-25T18:25:00.010-04:00

Susan and I returned yesterday from the annual governance conference of the Canadian Society of Corporate Secretaries that was held in historic Quebec City.

There was a lot riding on my shoulders and, even though the conference was an unprecedented success, I need a break before I plunge back into life at the office.

A little excursion today to Île Perrot seemed just the ticket. You see, Île Perrot harbors some very special secrets.

I thought I'd share two of the secrets with you.

If you're here, or when you come for a visit, and if you can explore on your own, you'll have two secrets to seek out, and more to discover on your own.

To get to Île Perrot I took the Galipeault bridge. So this post gets tagged as a bridge post as well. Bonus! For an aerial view of the bridge, and of Ile Perrot, click here.

The best place to see the Galipeault bridge is from the boardwalk in the village of Ste-Anne de Bellevue.

The boardwalk sits on the canal lock that allows pleasure craft to get from the Lake of Two Mountains to the west, to Lake St-Louis in the east. The lock itself sits right under the bridge (actually three bridges, once you include both vehicle spans and the railway bridge).

Navigable watercourses are a federal government jurisdiction, so the lock is a federal work.

The flag is flying at half-mast in honour of Jack Layton's passing last Monday. He was easily the most loved of Canada's federal politicians, and was the leader of the opposition in Parliament. When I announced his passing at the conference at Monday morning's plenary session, a ripple of shock spread through the ballroom at the Chateau Frontenac Hotel.

I got back on my Vespa and set out across the bridge to Île Perrot.

Just over the bridge, you'll find the first secret. It's not exactly what you'd call a genuine secret, since it's there for all to see, hiding in plain sight. It's just that unless you're in-the-know, you wouldn't know that one of Montreal's iconic fast food treats is smoked meat (others are 'Montreal bagels' - click here, and here, for the bagel posts - and of course, poutine which has spread all the way to New York, if you can believe it).

Anyway, you can get smoked meat in just about every no-star restaurant in the province of Quebec, and there are places in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver that claim to offer it as well. But, like the venerable Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich, most offerings of the delicacy leave much to be desired.

The kind of smoked meat that put smoked meat on the map is only served in a handful of Montreal restaurants, and nowhere else on earth.

There is the legendary Schwartz's on the main, along with the Main Deli, across the street, Dunn's is right up there at each one of its two or three branches, there is tiny Deli B, in the Valois village in Pointe Claire, Abie's on St-John's boulevard also in Pointe Claire, and then, there's...

From time to time, one of Montreal's daily newspapers holds a foodie survey to determine which place has the very best smoked meat. Schwartz's usually comes in first, and Smoke Meat Pete comes in second. For the life of me I don't know why, because Smoke Meat Pete is clearly head-and-shoulders the clear winner by a country mile.

Oh well! Les goûts se partagent mais ne se discutent pas! or à chacun son goût! or, as my brother-in-law is very fond of saying, à chacun son mishigas!

I didn't have time to stop to indulge, so I set off again, heading for the very tip of Ile Perrot.

My Vespa becomes a time machine, and I am magically transported to 1705.

I dismount, and twenty steps later, my Vespa might as well have been my horse.

A wooden walkway leads through the woods. A short enchanted stroll later and the best secret of Ile Perrot emerges from the light at the end of the soft green canopy.

There's the miller's cottage, and just beyond, at the water's edge, amazingly, a perfect little windmill.

The mill was lovingly restored back to its original working condition in 1979 and won an award for the best historical restoration. The last time I visited many years ago, the mill produced flour to demonstrate how mills operated in the 18th century.

The site is landscaped so that when you're at the mill, there is no evidence of the 21st century that intrudes to break the spell. You are, while you are there, truly transported in time.

When you turn around to leave, the modest miller's cottage stands in your way.

Before you leave, take a moment to take in the pure beauty of this slice of life from 1705.

Then again, with another of my time machines, in this case a wicked long lens on my Olympus SLR, I can peer forward in time and see what the city of the 21st century looks like, shimmering through the haze.

I thought you might appreciate a treasure map to guide you on your discovery of these secrets, so before setting off on my return trip, I pulled out my Iphone and switched on the GPS tracking. This interactive map is very cool. Click on the "Earth" option. Explore and you'll even find the windmill on your own.

View Ile-Perrot-2 in a larger map

The Jacques Bizard bridge

2011-08-20T14:13:00.000-04:00

Ile Bizard is one of Montreal's little jewels.

It's an island tucked away in Montreal's north-east wedged in between the Island of Montreal to the south, and Ile Jesus (the city of Laval) to the north. Ile Bizard is home to Montreal's most prestigious and exclusive golf club, the Royal Montreal Golf Club. I'm the furthest thing from a golfer, so the club gets short shrift here.

All along the shore on Ile Bizard, McMansions have been springing up. Every time I go for a ride there, a few more McMansions have sprouted. It's the water views that hold a special attraction for people with serious money. Doug Adams had views on the importance of boundary conditions (for instance at the water's edge) in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm not sure that the shores of Ile Bizard would have qualified for him, or, for that matter, that living in a McMansion on the shores of Ile Bizard would be the sort of place where you might transcend the human condition.

From the Montreal side you get to Ile Bizard over the Jacques Bizard bridge. From Laval you get there on a wonderful little cable ferry. I've written about the ferry before (click here) and I crossed on the ferry to Laval on the way to Ottawa (click here for that post).

This post is mostly about the bridge and fits as part of the Montreal bridge posts. Click here to go to the bridge posts page.

I wandered down the aptly named rue du Pont on the Montreal side to snap this picture of the bridge. The bridge is a three-lane bridge and there are overhead traffic lights that determine the direction of the center lane. In the morning there are two lanes southbound, in the evening, two lanes northbound. There is nothing else remarkable about the bridge. It's not particularly long; nor particularly tall; it's not a draw or lift-bridge; it isn't decorated or otherwise arty, and there is no particular magic to its engineering since it's neither cantilevered nor supended. It's just a serviceable and useful bridge. Not all bridges are as ambitious as the Golden Gate or the Pont Alexandre III.

If you were in a boat and headed westward up river from Ile Bizard you would enter the Lake of Two Mountains. Along with Lake St-Louis on the south shore of the West Island, these lakes are Montreal's boaters' paradise. All along the shore there are yatch clubs and marinas, home to hundreds of pleasure craft.

As a result of the greater concern for environmental issues, the Rivière des prairies is much cleaner than I remember it growing up.

Where the Rivière des prairies skirts the north shore of Ile Bizard the current is very strong. It's the strong current that makes the passage on the cable ferry remarkably swift. Just up stream and west of the ferry, the river is navigable but the navigation channel has rapids that must make the passage fun, but a little choppy. Unless you have a boat with a very strong motor, you won't make it back up stream.

To wrap up this post on the Jacques Bizard bridge, here is a video taken crossing the bridge back to the Montreal side. Not very exciting, but it wraps up this post well enough.

First long distance ride

2011-08-16T23:19:00.007-04:00

I did it yesterday.

A road trip from Montreal to Ottawa and back. On my Vespa. I've included a Google Earth view of the trip, mainly because I couldn't figure out how to embed a complete Google map view. I've now figured out that the trip was so long that the result is actually seven Google map segments. There are so many that I've added them to the end of this post.

8 1/2 hours (9:30 a.m to 6:00 p.m.); 375 kilometres, 233 miles; one more province added to the places I've ridden; one $3.00 ferry trip; 6 or 7 bridges; three pit stops to top up with gas; one chat with a fellow rider on a big Beemer who couldn't quite believe a guy on a small-frame Vespa was pacing him; one stop for a bite to eat; one massive traffic jam in Gatineau due to road work; one hour spent visiting my dad; one rush hour in Ottawa; two dozen or so bugs obliterated on my visor; three sets of disposable ear plugs; 75 kms on the Trans-Canada Highway with the throttle twisted to the stop, too few pictures to share, and one numb bum.

That's it for the ride stats.

What did I learn?

Long distance riding is tough. Really tough. The Vespa's gas tank is not designed for long distances. Nor is the saddle or seating position for that matter. 150 cubic centimeters is 100 or so cubic centimeters short for pacing traffic on a straight, two-lane, 90 km/h highway. A mid-height windscreen and a Nolan N-102 helmet is a combination that is WAY TOO LOUD for comfort, even with 32db noise canceling ear plugs.

The sweet spot for the Vespa LX 150 is urban riding. That's where the Vespa really shines. It's fun to ride; it's incredibly nimble; it hauls an incredible range of stuff so it's great for shopping; it can filter through traffic jams like a ghost through walls; you can park it anywhere; it turns heads because it's gorgeous; and the urban riding list goes on, and on.

Which is not to say I didn't have fun on this trip.

The absolute best was a stretch of highway 148 along the Ottawa river in Quebec. It was twisty with good pavement and a speed limit of 80 km/h. Traffic was doing just under 100 km/h. With the throttle wide open, the bike just ate up those sweeping turns. I felt like I was one with the machine, counter steering with just the right pressure on the handle bars, leaning first this way, then that. It was just fantastic.

I also appreciated the elderly gentlemen who came up to me after my bite to eat at a roadside hotdog stand, to ask about the Vespa and whether it was made in Italy. He explained to me that the wheels were small because they originally were recycled aircraft landing gear. And I believe he is right.

Crossing from Ile Bizard to Laval on the cable ferry was fun. I hadn't taken that ferry in years.

I also enjoyed stopping at the church in St-Eustache. During the 1837 rebellion the British army laid siege to the church where some of the rebels had taken refuge. You can still see where the wall is pocked by cannon fire. When I was a kid, my mother used to point out a cannon ball that had remained lodged in the wall. That bit must have been repaired at some point, or the cannon ball was dislodged, because it's no longer there.

Visiting my Dad was the reason I went to Ottawa. He loves jackets, so he just had to model my armored BMW Airflow.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the ride home was not much fun. It was much more about endurance. Highway 17 in Ontario was straight, flat, and fast. The limit was 90 km/h and traffic wanted to do 105 km/h, a tad more than the Vespa LX 150 is able to muster. That stretch of road is a two-lane highway with few passing opportunities. The result was that for some stretches I was leading a parade.

Relief from that misery came when Highway 17 merged with 417 which is the Trans-Canada Highway. For some reason the slight head wind went away and I was able to average about 100 km/h. With traffic able to pass me in the other lane it was actually much more comfortable. It also helped that the opposing traffic on the west bound lanes was on the far side of the very wide median instead of being in the lane right next to me.

Between the 17 and the 417, the return trip ended up being a wide-open-throttle affair pretty much all the way. To be honest I was getting concerned about the impact on the Vespa's 150cc Leader engine. The good news is that after I turned off the motor when I stopped to gas up for the last leg home, the bike started right up without a fuss after the five minute respite.

Would I do it again?

375 kilometers is a lot of ground to cover with any vehicle, let alone a Vespa. And yet, if you look at the links on the right of the page, you'll find many accounts of cross continental trips on Vespa LX 150s, and even on 50cc bikes. I was always impressed with those exploits. Now with my own experience, I am in awe of those incredible trips. Any thought I might have had that I could go coast to coast on my Vespa is receding pretty quickly from my mind.

I might try another long trip if I upgrade to a GTS though. The larger motor would have eliminated the anxiety of not being able pace the traffic.

And before any longish trips are planned, I need to rethink my gear. I need to get a new windscreen and cut it only slightly down so I can see over it and eliminate the noisy turbulence. I also need a much quieter helmet. Not having to contend with that drumming in my ears for hours on end would also have made a huge difference.

Here are those Google maps. The route I took is indicated by the blue trail on the map. There appears to be some kind of a bug with the embedding code, and the route may not be visible on the thumbnail of the map. Scrolling around, or zooming out will reveal the route. I include these maps in the interest of completeness, in case anyone wants a more detailed closer look at the trip.

View Ottawa-trip in a larger map

View Ottawa-trip in a larger map

View Ottawa-trip in a larger map

View Ottawa-trip in a larger map

View Ottawa-trip in a larger map

View Ottawa-trip in a larger map

View Ottawa-trip in a larger map

Sunrise on Lake St-Louis

2011-08-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

Today was going to be my first long road trip. As often happens, work got in the way of fun, and took its usual precedence. The trip to Ottawa is still on, but it will be Monday, weather permitting.

I invite you to hang around here, because I will take that epic trip, and I expect that there will be a long blog post or two to tell the tale.

To mitigate the pain of postponement, I interrupted the morning commute to take these early morning pictures of the lake.

I cheated a little, taking advantage of the Vespa's ability to go where other vehicles can't, and parked right next to the Pointe Claire pier. The pier is barely west of the Pointe Claire village. It offers a nice view of Lake St-Louis looking east.

In this next picture you get an idea of where I parked in relation to where the intended parking is.

I snapped my pictures with my Iphone, and, ready to face the work day, continued the ride to the office.

Looking at these pictures, I am reminded once more that I have to renounce the Iphone for these kinds of photos. The focus usually seems murky, and the pictures often lack the depth that I can get with either my ancient Olympus 3 megapixel camera or my Olympus SLR. There's always room for improvement.

Another bridge(s)

2011-08-10T14:05:00.011-04:00

There's no better way for me to decompress than to set my sights on a scooter objective.

If you've been following this blog, you know that Montreal's bridges are one of my favourite challenges.

A doctor's appointment took my Vespa and I to a different spot on the island, and put me within range of another target bridge: the Lachapelle bridge that spans the river I always knew simply as the "back river" when I was growing up. In fact it's the Rivière des Prairies.

I guess people called it the "back river" because, with downtown Montreal on the south side of the island, the north shore is easily thought of as the "back" of the island. The river there naturally becomes the "back river".

That's just speculation on my part. A historian would need to dig into that to find out the truth. Since this is my blog, and it's late, I'm satisfied with my explanation and I'll leave it at that.

The appeal of the Lachapelle bridge is that I grew up in the Chomedey section of the City of Laval. To get to Montreal you pretty much always took the Lachapelle bridge (Autoroute 13 wasn't even in the planning stages back then). We always used to call it the Cartierville bridge, because Cartierville was the name of the Montreal neighborhood on the south side of the bridge.

Nostalgia is the main reason I am drawn to the Lachapelle bridge. I must have crossed that bridge thousands of times growing up: in my parents' car, on buses, occasionally on foot, and solo during my college days on my 10-speed bicycle. Countless commutes were spent in the early 70's with my Dad and my sisters in the family car in an endless bumper-to-bumper line-up waiting to cross that bridge. When we moved to Montreal Island in 1973, one of the things we didn't miss was that bridge and those traffic jams.

With the population growth in Laval, the Lachapelle bridge became two bridges in 1975: the bridge of my childhood, and a new sister span right next to it. Today they resemble fraternal twins. The original span is all steel trusses of varying angles. It now carries traffic north to Laval. The newer sister span has trusses shaped as graceful arcs and it carries traffic south to the island of Montreal. The photo below is a screen shot nabbed from Google Maps.

After crossing to Laval on the original span, I went east to seek a vantage point to take these pictures. I found one that took me right to the water's edge. There are even a couple of park benches there inviting you to sit and take in the river as it flows eastward under those bridges.

One more mission accomplished. It's nice to scratch that itch.

August bliss

2011-08-09T06:36:00.001-04:00

I pulled into the parking lot at the Pointe Claire Venture Sailing School to snap this picture with my Iphone.

It only takes a minute or so to take a photo on the way to work.

On any given day there are many scenes that I would love to record. The beauty of riding a scooter to work is that I do stop sometimes to take a picture.

My photography skills are hit and miss though. The Camera+ app takes much better pictures than the built-in camera application on the phone, but can't compete with my Olympus SLR.

I often think that I'll take some time one day to bring my SLR on a leisurely scooter ramble, but so far it's just wishful thinking.

In the meantime the beauty of the moment slips past me in a visual stream.

If the weather cooperates, I plan to take my first long distance ride on Friday: a day trip to Ottawa to visit my father. It's approximately 350 kilometers or 217 miles round trip.

The benefit of experience

2011-08-07T22:30:00.000-04:00

I am fond of saying that experience is what you get, when you were expecting something else.

In many ways I have gotten what I expected back when I set out on my scooter commuting adventure last year. But I have also gotten more than I bargained for, much more.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that the more you do something, the better you get at it.

Riding is no exception.

My Vespa LX 150 motor scooter hasn't changed much since the day I got it, at least not in any way that relates to its performance. It doesn't go any faster, or handle differently.

I have changed as a rider though. Seven thousand-plus miles on two scooter-wheels changed me.

Looking back, it is easy for me to see how I have changed.

I am more confident now.

There are things that I can do more automatically. I mean that I can do them with less deliberate thought. Some are simple things like turning on or cancelling my turn signals, or being able to find the horn button in an instant, or routinely using the kill switch to turn off the motor.

Some things that I do routinely require more skill and knowledge. Counter steering to get just the right lean and keep the bike on a safe arc while accelerating into a sweeping turn at higher speed, for instance. Or slow speed sharp turns at intersections. Last year I remember writing that those turns were always awkward and unsettling (click here). Now I often handle those turns decently, and sometimes elegantly, which actually makes me grin with satisfaction inside my helmet when I feel the bike swooping through a slow sharp turn, both feet on the floor, with no fear that I might lose my balance and drop the bike. Properly done, it's like a controlled fall into the turn, using the throttle to generate the centrifugal force that counteracts the fall and eventually rights the bike.

I am comfortable now on all city streets. I know that I can safely travel in any lane, on any street I choose. There was a time in the early days of my scooter commuting that I felt safest only in the "slow" lane.

The most recent step in my education has been expressway travel. The first time I ventured onto a limited access roadway, the forces exerted by the wind at higher speeds were quite unexpected and took some time to get used to. Today, I know that I can take an expressway without anxiety or discomfort.

The art and science of learning how to ride, and ride well, is enough of a challenge for me that it adds a new dimension to my life. It is a source of pleasure and satisfaction, and gives me a feeling of real accomplishment.

In the end, the greatest pleasure is the feeling of freedom riding gives me. As I improve as a rider, my horizons broaden. I feel that I can go anywhere, at a moment's notice. Trips that were once routine are now ripe with pleasure and adventure.

There is still much more to learn, many places I haven't been to that I need to visit on two wheels.

The evolution of parking

2011-07-29T17:08:00.000-04:00

Last year I put up a post on scooter parking and BIXI stands. You can get to that post by clicking here.

Now, a little over a year later, my theory that each BIXI stand offers parking for at least two scooters seems to have taken root as a generalized practice here.

Am I only an observer, or, by publishing my observation, did I interfere with what might have been, and contribute in one way or another to expanding an isolated event into an actual trend?

Evidence in favour of the latter is the fact that my original post that mentioned the theory that BIXI stands offered natural scooter parking is the fourth most viewed post on my blog.

I'll never know.

I'm definitely not in flash-mob territory, but it's a tantalizing thought, if only for me.

Saturday joyride

2011-07-25T09:39:00.005-04:00

Late Saturday afternoon, after a dip in the pool, I hopped on my Vespa and headed west along the lake shore towards Ste Anne de Bellevue.

It was a nice opportunity to try out my new-to-me BMW Motorrad Air Flow summer riding jacket. For the occasion I removed my windshield.

All I can say is wow! It's like not wearing a riding jacket at all. Plus it looks really nice, it's beautifully made, has all the right armor, and fits me like a proverbial glove.

To give it a good try, I decided to ride over the Galipault bridge to Ile Perrot. Once there I followed the country highway that goes along the lake.

I stopped to take these pictures before turning around to head back home.

Across the lake looking east, you can see the city. It's easy with the naked eye, tougher with the Iphone camera.

I zoomed in to get a picture that allows the skyline to be seen. It's grainy because it's taken with a digital zoom, but it's good enough to let you see what I mean.

I switched on the GPS tracker on my Iphone so I would be able to post a map of the return ride.

View ile-perrot-jaunt in a larger map

That straight bit on the West Island is a couple of exits' worth of Autoroute 20 where I got up to about 65 mph indicated on the Vespa's speedometer, or about 57 mph in real GPS verified speed.

All in all, a very nice 28 km jaunt on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

The things you see

2011-07-23T18:10:00.001-04:00

I spotted this girl riding a trike and trailering a small house, on the de Maisonneuve street bike path downtown. I had to take a picture to share here. All thanks to Steve Jobs and the Iphone!

Planes, trains and automobiles

2011-07-22T10:56:00.002-04:00

That's the fitting title of the current exhibit at the Dorval Museum.

It's fitting because Dorval is home to Montreal's Trudeau international airport, so named for our former famous Prime Minister. I had occasion to meeet him briefly in his retirement back in 1997. It's weird to think that I personally met someone with an aiport named after them.

Dorval is also host to a stop on the trans-continental railway, and it's the automobile that made Dorval one of the metropolis' early bedroom communities.

I've been living on the West Island for more than twenty years and only recently became aware that Dorval had a museum. It's on Lakeshore Blvd. which is my usual commuting route.

There's something about scooter commuting that invites small digressions. I chalk it up to a number of factors:

The pace is a little more leisurely.
You are connected to the path you follow because the sounds, sights and smells are experienced more intimately than in a car.
It's somehow easier to stop and check things out because the scooter is small and so manoeuvrable.
You tend to take more quiet routes where there are more interesting things to see.

The Dorval Museum is a case in point. I had noticed it during my commutes, tucked away along the lake, a stone's throw from the Forest & Stream Club. I have a previous post on the club that you can get to by clicking here.

Thursday morning I took a few minutes out to explore. I parked my Vespa at the back of the empty parking lot where there's flagstone path leading to the water's edge.

The museum is only open in the afternoon so I peered through the window for a glimpse of what this tiny museum might have to offer.

I was a little surprised to find a moped in the museum, although finding a lifesize plane, train or even automobile would have been shocking. That serendipitous find dovetails nicely with the two-wheeled theme here.

I made a mental note to pop in sometime this summer to see what else this little gem has to offer and find out the story of that moped.

One of these things does not belong

2011-07-19T22:45:00.001-04:00

Imagine my surprise.

I've seen a bike like this before of course. In Washington this past April.

No, I doubt that anyone rode the bike here and docked it. BIXI supplies the DC Capital Bikeshare equipment and somehow one of those bikes slipped into the Montreal network.

I wonder if there are Montreal branded BIXIs in DC or Toronto? Kind of like a public bike exchange program.

On my way back to the office 20 minutes later, the DC bike was gone. If I didn't have the picture to prove to myself that my eyes didn't deceive me I might be thinking I had hallucinated the whole thing.

Do you think the guy might be pedalling back to DC?

Night Ride

2011-07-17T12:12:00.000-04:00

Is your riding confined to daylight?

Mine is, mostly. Night rides are nice because they are exceptions.

Cool, dark glides on quiet roads with the glow of instruments for mood lighting.

The reassuring feeling of control emanating from the dashboard instruments in sharp contrast to the night, cloaking familiar scenes, now more sensed than seen.

Moonlight silvery on the lake. Moths streeking in bright trails silently by my visor.

Truly a special scooter commuter's treat. Almost makes up for working late.

Crazy ... hazy days of summer

2011-07-12T18:35:00.001-04:00

I just love, love, love this time of year.

There is nothing quite as soothing and relaxing as looking out over a lake in summer and seeing a far shore veiled in haze. That's what greeted me today, five minutes into my morning commute.

This bridge won't burn!

2011-07-08T19:11:00.013-04:00

Wikimedia Commons photo

I finally did it!

In the end it wasn't nearly as death-defying as anyone might expect. On my lunch hour I crossed the Victoria Bridge.

The title for this post hints at the fact that the bridge is made of cast iron, and the bridge piers are constructed of huge granite blocks. It's the oldest of Montreal's bridges, having been built in the 1850's, yet it's the only one that isn't in imminent danger of catastrophic collapse.

View Victoria-bridge in a larger map
The Google map for this post was generated with my Iphone using a free GPS tracking app. I have no clue how interactive it will be until I submit the post. This is the first map I'm embedding. Fingers crossed. [ed.: well that worked!]

The issue with the Victoria Bridge is that it has a metal grid deck. It's legendary among drivers and there are quite a number who won't use the bridge because a) it makes cars squirm, and b) you can see the water below if you look down at the roadway.

I more or less knew what to expect because the Charlevoix bridge across the Lachine Canal that I cross almost daily has the same decking. But the Charlevoix is a tiny bridge, relatively speaking, and there's always traffic, so you cross it at maybe 30 km/h.

You don't even find out about the posted limit on the Victoria until you're on the bridge. And the bridge approach is long and convoluted enough, with a tunnel on the approach, so you don't even get to see the bridge until you're committed to it.

It turns out that the posted speed limit on the bridge is a very reasonable, reassuring, and quite comfortable 50 km/h.

To err on the side of caution I approached this ride in full ATGATT (ed.: all the gear, all the time - for the benefit of the non-rider readers out there). Corazzo 5.0 armored jacket, motorcycle gloves, Nolan N102 modular full-face helmet, my hiking boots, and even zipped up the legs on my Tourmaster Caliber pants to close the open gaps on my thighs that provide much-needed summer ventilation. Buzz Aldrin wasn't wearing much more gear when he set out for his celebrated moon walk.

To make sure I documented this life-altering ride to its full historic potential, I made sure before setting out that my my Garmin StreetPilot i5 GPS unit was up and running, and that my Iphone was well positioned to capture video of the ride.

GPS and Iphone on RAM mounts

I was a little disappointed because there was a maintenance van on the bridge that backed up the traffic. We crawled onto the bridge. Traffic eventually maxed out at 51 km/h as reported by my Garmin StreetPilot i5 GPS unit. The squirm factor was quite pronounced, and was more nerve-wracking on a powered two-wheeler than at the wheel of a car. The bike not only squirms in the horizontal plane (i.e. side-to-side) but also in the vertical plane (i.e. the wheels sway left and right under you, as if you were alternately leaning left, then right).

I'll revisit this post to add a Youtube video of this very memorable crossing.

[ed.: here's that video]

The return trip across the bridge proved to be more in line with my expectations. The traffic was lighter and sailing across at a good clip. My GPS showed 71 km/h when I glanced at it. I can't say that the squirm got any worse really. I wondered what it would feel like to perform an evasive procedure on that surface. The nice thing about a bridge is that there are no squirrels; the nice thing about a bridge with a metal deck is that there are no sewer covers, and best of all, no !"/%$?/\#!! pot-holes, so there was nothing to evade. Just as well because with all the squirming going on, I was in no mind to experiment.

My visor was up, and about halfway across the span a large-ish bug did a suicide run at my face, clipping me on the left cheek. I took the chance of taking my left hand off the handlebars to close the visor.

Thank heavens I did, because when I got to the final third of the bridge, whatever the insects were, they were rising from the sides of the bridge and coming at me by the tens. It was like the battle of Britain. OK, that's an exaggeration. I felt better shields-up though I can tell you.

My big adventure was tempered, and put into much-needed perspective, when I pulled up beside a guy about my age on a much smaller 50cc two-stroke scoot stopped at the first traffic light on the Montreal side of the bridge. There he sits: shorts, short-sleeved shirt, glove-less, loafers, and an open-faced helmet.

He sees me, shoots me a great big beaming smile, and, in inimitable Québécois French says "Ça brasse en titi s'ul pont, einh?" which, loosely translated, means "It really sways on the bridge, eh?"

Lachine Village

2011-07-05T12:32:00.001-04:00

Lachine Borough Town Hall

My usual route into work takes me along St-Joseph boulevard through the heart of old Lachine village. St-Joseph boulevard is the continuation of Lakeshore road and it is in the village of Lachine that the Lachine Canal begins. The canal is a 19th century work that allowed shipping to bypass the formidable Lachine rapids. The canal opens at the eastern end of Lake St-Louis and heads downstream towards the port of Montreal.

The Montreal borough of Lachine takes its name from a massive, shameless, 17th century, bold-faced, lie.

Unwilling to admit to their capricious royal patrons in Europe that they had failed to find a westward passage to the riches of India and China, the european explorers called the westernmost place they could reach in their exploration "Lachine", or la Chine in French, or China in English; and the indigenous inhabitants of North America they called "Indians". Asked if they had gotten to China and India, their reply was a disingenuous mais oui!

There you go, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, sort of. I can do no better than to give the last word on this to Mark Twain who famously observed that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes".

Lachine, before the advent of the Lachine Canal, was the jumping off point for the great fur trade. From here voyageurs headed up the St-Lawrence in huge cargo canoes towards the great lakes. Fortified warehouses were built to store the furs eventually bound for the port of Montreal on their way to old Europe. Some of those buildings are still standing.

Lachine Fur Trade Museum

Today, the waterfront in the Lachine village is a mix of residential properties and charming restaurants.

Il Fornetto - one of the many restaurants in the Lachine Village

Sitting in the middle of the village is the stately borough town hall, that you can see in the first photo in this post.

Across the way is the oldest portion of the lachine canal that today serves mainly as a landscape element in the linear park that follows the shore.

Further east, just beyond the village, pleasure boaters can enter the first of several locks that eventually lead all the way to the port of Montreal where there is a marina right at the foot of old Montreal.

My scooter commute traces most of that path, breaking off and crossing the canal at the Charlevoix bridge where I head into the downtown core.

Outremont

2011-07-04T23:49:00.000-04:00

It's Monday, July 4, 2011, and though it's Independence Day for the lucky folks in the US, it's the first day back to work for me. Maybe that's why I couldn't keep my fingers out of the frame when I took the picture.

I decided to take a northern route to the office that takes me through the Montreal borough of Outremont, a very upscale neighborhood on the north slope of Mount Royal.

The northern portion of Outremont, that's to say the part below Cote Ste-Catherine road, sits on a gentle slope and is laid out on a fairly straightforward grid. The streets feature either detached or semi-detached brick and stone cottages on lots that are narrow but deep rectangles. Typically each home has a driveway leading to either a free-standing garage, or a garage that is part of the home, but that is accessed at the rear of the property.

In some cases, particularly towards the eastern reach of the municipality, the homes are row houses with an alleyway in the rear for access to garages or sheds in the yard.

As you can see, Outremont is an oasis of green and relative calm that sits close to downtown. It's large nineteenth and early twentieth century homes make it a desirable location with home prices to match.

The corner of Fairmont and Hutchison towards the northeastern edge of the town is where you'll find the Croissanterie Figaro. I've mentioned this delightful corner café in a post last year which you can find by clicking here. If you look very carefully you can just spot my Vespa LX150 parked at the curb.

In no time a fresh croissant and bowl of café au lait is there to serve as a very gentle and genteel introduction back to my work-a-day scoot commute.

Jealous yet? You should be :)

As always, there's more to come.

Business and pleasure

2011-07-03T18:04:00.000-04:00

The past two weeks have been hectic.

A conference to attend in Colorado Springs, followed by a summer getaway, first to Bryce Canyon in Utah (nature in all its glory), then to Las Vegas, Nevada (a blitz of glitz, glitz, glitz).

Both places were a lot of fun and relaxation at both ends of the spectrum. Just the ticket to change things up and refresh my perspective.

Life on two wheels has therefore been on the back burner, but I do have this to share which is kind of relevant.

Two intrepid Las Vegas police officers making a traffic stop on Las Vegas Boulevard, in the middle lane, on bicycles.

I don't imagine the driver was much of a scofflaw, but it would have been cool if he had made a break for it, just to see those two officers hell bent for leather in hot pursuit.

The scoot commute resumes in earnest tomorrow, weather permitting.

Scratch that :(

2011-06-21T06:46:00.000-04:00

Publicists for the Larry Crowne movie offered to let me run a little contest here but things are just too hectic at the moment and I just can't devote the time required to do it in a timely way.

If you want to see Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts scooting through life, check out the movie when it opens near you.

Monday June 20 is Ride to Work Day!

2011-06-20T04:00:00.006-04:00

It's a new chapter in my blogging experience, because my Ride-to-Work Day post is coming to you from the west coast on Scootin Old Skool, Orin O'Neil's world famous scooter blog.

Check it out by clicking here.

And watch this space in the coming day or so because I've got an interesting contest for you to enter and I'll be giving away a prize that could keep you scooting in style for a week or more.

Stay tuned!

Toronto Rocks!!!

2011-06-15T22:23:00.001-04:00

Another very important conference to attend in Toronto, another remarkable success. It's really nice to be on a roll. Here's hoping my luck holds until October 26, 2011. I'll spare you the details because it has nothing to do with my blog, and I apologize for being cryptic.

If I've piqued your curiosity, and you just can't help yourself, you will soon be able to see what it's all about at www.cscs.org, but I warn you, if the words "shareholder democracy" don't really resonate with you, don't bother. If they do, maybe we should talk.

So what do I have to share with you?

More of the same: a glimpse of life on two wheels in Canada's financial capital.

First, here are Toronto's BIXIs at the corner of Bay street.

Then, have a look at this collection of Vespas parked on the sidewalk just east of Bay street on Wellington (there's nothing wrong with your speakers, I deleted the audio track which was just annoying street noise).

I know, I know, that last one's not a Vespa. Still, six scooters and five of them Vespas on a single block, wow!

And then this trio down on Queen's Quay on the waterfront (although the one that looks like a PX may actually be a Stella).

Way to go Toronto!

Thoughts on my windshield

2011-06-14T13:51:00.008-04:00

I installed the Cuppini tall windscreen just as the winter ended and the 2011 riding season started.

It made a BIG difference riding in low temperatures (-1C to 50C).

Now that the weather is summer-ish, it's also making a BIG difference: it's too hot!

Here, in no particular order, are my observations on the tall windscreen:

Riding with the tall windscreen means my visor was always up. Not a bad thing really.
The wind comes from behind me with the windscreen. The windscreen creates a trailing vacuum. When it's cold, I get a cold draft on my back. When it's raining, the back of my rain jacket looks like the back window of an SUV, all covered in dirt and road grime.
Riding in the rain and seeing though both a rain-speckled windshield and a rain-speckled visor is distracting at best. At night it's a bad recipe.
Heading into late afternoon sun, the windshield seems to make it much more difficult to see what's going on with side streets. The too high contrast combined with glare make it difficult to see cars and pedestrians on those street corners.
The windscreen keeps some rain off my body, but not as much as I expected, particularly in the city driving I do. It doesn't make any difference because I wear rain gear. But if you're thinking that a tall windshield will help you stay dry, think again.
My Vespa sounds completely different with the windscreen on. I hear all types of rattles and mechanical sounds with the screen on, particularly, I think, a kind of whine from the transmission. I know what you're thinking, but no, there's nothing wrong with the transmission, it's just been thoroughly inspected and cleaned when my drive belt was changed last week.
The Cuppini mounting hardware could stand improvement. Unlike the Vespa OEM mounts, the Cuppini mounts are all metal. When I removed the windscreen on Saturday, the left mount came out easily once I loosened the bolt, but the right one was a whole other story. I had to disassemble the headset and remove the right turn indicator so I could get a pair of vice-grips to lock onto the longish split sleeve piece and wrench it out. I'm in the market for some Vespa mounts.
Cleaning the windscreen certainly isn't a chore, but it's one more thing to do before I can hop on my bike and go.
I can REALLY hear my turn indicator beeper. Even traveling on an expressway at 95 km/h I can hear the beeper quite well. It's only faintly audible without the windscreen at those speeds.
I got the tall windscreen because it's the only one that extends in front of the hand grips. That cover for the hands makes commuting in cold weather MUCH more comfortable. My hands still get a little cold with Corazzo winter gauntlets on, but not thoroughly chilled like they used to.
On my commute last Friday, a bird flew into scooter hitting the front near or just below the headlight and partially on the windshield. It didn't hit very hard, fluttered there for a second struggling to break free from the air forcing it onto the bike, slid off the windshield, and continued on its way, flying up into the trees on the opposite side of the road. I don't know whether the windshield helped me or not, helped the bird or not, or even disoriented the bird causing the strike. I mention it only because it relates in some fashion to the windscreen.

After riding with the windscreen for April and May, and after giving it a lot of thought, I've decided to cut the windscreen down to mid-height. Many members on Modern Vespa seem to prefer the mid-height screen and that counts for a lot.

Based on my personal experience to date, the advantages of not having to look through the screen in the rain and at night, plus perhaps the opportunity to direct more air to my helmet where I can control air flow with the visor and helmet vents, are benefits that are important to me.

The potential disadvantage is that I won't like the way the air will flow once the screen is cut down.

The risk is that I won't be happy with the result and I will have wasted a $95 windshield. I can live with that.

There are detailed instructions on the Modern Vespa forum for cutting down windscreens. If I didn't have access to a qualified expert, I'd tackle the job myself.

I'm lucky though because the local glass and mirror shop is recommended by the local motorsports dealer and has plenty of experience cutting down motorcycle windscreens. I pulled into their parking lot on Saturday, and I had barely stepped into the shop when the person at the cash asked if I wanted my windscreen cut down. Now that's experience.

They will do the job for $35. So that seals it.

If I bring it in next Saturday morning, they'll have the job done by noon. Last Sunday before taking the windscreen off I set up a tripod in the garage and took these pictures with masking tape at three different heights showing where the screen might be cut down to:

I decided to cut it down to the lowest of the three positions. Before coming to that conclusion, I taped a large piece of parchment paper (the type you use to line baking sheets) across the windshield to make it easier to picture what I could see without looking through the windscreen.

I look forward to riding the bike with the mid-height screen. I'll only post this when I've tried the screen after it's cut.

Getting the windshield mounts off my Vespa once I removed the windshield turned out to be a challenge and more of a chore than I would have liked.

When I loosened the compression nuts, the left side mount came off without a fuss.

The right side mount got loose, but wouldn't come out of the receiver for love or money.

In the end I had to dismantle the headset, loosen the right turn indicator, get all that plastic out of the way to expose the mount, and then wrestle the mount out of the receiver with a pair of vice grips.

I had read on the Modern Vespa forum that the Cuppini mounts could get stuck that way and that the Vespa mounts were better, with the compression sleeve or the expansion nut piece being made of vinyl instead of metal.

So I took one of the mounts to the Vespa dealer thinking I'd order a pair of Vespa OEM mounts.

After a chat with the mechanics there, they said they had a strong preference for the type of mount I already have. They say that the Vespa mounts can sometimes become loose and dislodge. They have seen this happen often enough that they prefer to use, and they recommend, the metal mounts.

They acknowledge however that the metal mounts sometimes become jammed because loosening the compression nuts on the expansion sleeve won't allow the sleeve to back off the expansion bolt at the far end of the mount, which is what happened to one of my mounts.

They then showed me the foolproof, if somewhat counter-intuitive, solution: whack the mount in further with a mallet.

The reason this always works is that there is a collar on the expansion sleeve that rests against the receiver on the handlebar and prevents the expansion sleeve from going in any further once it's properly seated.

Whacking the mount forces the mount to slide further in, but the collar holds the sleeve in place, which, of course, forces the expansion bolt, which is screwed onto the end of the mount, out of the compression sleeve and, presto, the mount slides free. You mustn't whack too hard, so as not to damage any surrounding tender bits.

If I had thought about this some more, I might have remembered how to adjust bicycle handle bars which requires a similar procedure: loosen the bolt, then whack it with a mallet. Same problem, same solution.

The dealer's mechanics also recommend i) greasing the expansion sleeve when you install the mount (unfortunately, I hadn't), and ii) not over tightening the compression nuts (thankfully, I hadn't).

It's amazing what you learn chatting with the pros.

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I dropped off the windshield at Vitrerie Lanthier on St-Charles boulevard yesterday morning and picked it up a few hours later, minus some height.

I now have a custom windshield for my Vespa. I mounted it yesterday. To minimize later removal issues, I greased the metal mounts, then applied teflon plumber's tape to the part that slips into the receiver and took care not to over-tighten the compression nuts. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Here is a three-sixty-five view of the cut-down windshield.

I like the way the bike looks with the lower screen, of that there's no doubt whatever.

I am anxious to test it out, but the weather is not really cooperating.

Once I give it a go, particularly on the expressway, I'll write up my impressions here and then publish this post.

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I took the Vespa for a spin on Sunday. Beaconsfield boulevard west and then Lakeshore Road to Ste-Anne de Bellevue. It's a nice scenic ride, about 15 minutes in each direction.

The cut-down windscreen makes a difference indeed. I can see over the windshield and that's really nice, I get the airflow to my face, and I also get more air to my upper body, while my hands stay protected. It's all good... except... the noise I get from the air hitting my helmet is substantial.

I may have cut the screen too short, and I may need earplugs to cope with the noise.

It's still premature to conclude on this experiment. I need to get a few commutes done with the cut down windscreen. Once I've done that, I'll come back and edit this post to add a conclusion of sorts.

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Coming to this post a little later: my conclusions on the windscreen adventure.

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I've been riding all summer with that cut down windshield and it's time to wrap this post up.

With all the heat we've been having I removed the windshield this past Saturday (July 23rd, 2011) and have gotten in a mix of riding on local roads, highways, and expressways.

The difference is night and day. I've summarized my impressions in a table below. The formatting is a little awkward, but I think it's a good way to set out my impressions.

	Full height	Mid-height windshield	No windshield
View	Some glare and reflection. Noticeably difficult in the rain.	See over the windshield	Unrestricted
Air flow	Virtually no air flow to the front. Air pocket causes a reverse breeze to the back, sucks road dirt onto the rider's back	Air is directed to the top half of the rider's head. The airflow is turbulent, increasing noise substantially.	Even airflow to the Upper body.
Low speed (0-25 mph - 0-40 km/h)	Feel insulated from the road.	Turbulent air to the helmet is felt, increasing noise in the helmet.	Just plain scooter fun.
Medium speed ( 25-45 mph - 40-72 km/h)	No air. Period. Still feel insulated from the road.	Nice airflow to the upper body and head but little to the hands. Great for cooler temps. Turbulent air causes substantial noise in the helmet.	Significant airflow to the upper body and face, ride with visor half to 3/4 closed.
Hi-speeed (> 45 mph - 72 km/h)	Bike sounds different. Turn signal beeper clearly heard at high speed. No significant wind, ride with visor fully up.	No windblast to the upper body or head. Ride with visor half open. No strain on the upper body. Need earplugs for the noise. Little airflow to the hands.	Heavy windblast to the upper body and head. Neck muscles strain against the wind pressure to the helmet. Ride with visor cracked open. Ample airflow to the hands, very cold in spring and fall.
Handling	Difficult to take the scooter off the center-stand without hitting the windshield. Inability to lean over the headset reduces leverage when manoeuvering without the motor (parking). Marginal increase in top speed.	No low-speed handling issues. At high speed, increased stability and marginal increase in top speed.	Less stability at high speed, mainly due to the wind blast forces on the upper body.

Gawkers' Paradise + Need for Speed

2011-06-12T09:53:00.001-04:00

The annual F1 bash is in town, and things are hopping!

It's the ultimate boys' dream weekend: a visual cornucopia of hot cars and hot women, and many of them are fast too.

I was fast too this week. But my kind of thrill would leave the F1 crowd yawning.

I had a 7:30 breakfast meeting on Thursday and planned to leave the house at 6:15.

A few moments' distraction and a last minute search for some stuff and the Vespa clock was reading 6:41 a.m. as I rolled out of the driveway.

Some mental math as I cruised along Beaconsfield Boulevard at 30 km/h, wary of the police speed trap that is a regular feature of the morning commute, suggested that I wouldn't make it on time.

So I took a route I've never taken on two wheels before. Autoroute 20 from St-Charles to the Ville Marie Expressway and off at the Guy street exit right downtown.

For the most part the volume of traffic kept the pace between 80 and 90 km/h. At those speeds the Vespa LX150 cruises comfortably with some oomph in reserve.

For a good stretch on the West Island portion I was wide open throttle though. There was little headwind and I hit 76 mph indicated on the Vespa speedometer.

My now ancient Garmin Streetpilot i5 was cooperating for once, and on that stretch at 76 mph indicated speed I was pacing traffic in the right lane at a GPS-verified 105 km/h (65 mph). More importantly, I was comfortable cruising along at that speed. Without a windscreen.

That's a personal two-wheel land speed record for yours truly, and quite a high speed thrill.

It's one of the reasons I don't need to sit in the grandstand at the Senna corner on the F1 track to get my kicks.

That's why I was very happy to give those tickets for Sunday's race to a close and very deserving friend who will get a thrill from the experience.

Win-Win! Grin!

Visiting Vampires

2011-06-03T13:05:00.001-04:00

Now that's Costanza parking! And it's the only good thing about going for my annual blood test.

The only person who parked closer to the outpatient entrance at the Lakeshore General Hospital this morning was the person who locked their bicycle to the railing outside the door. Plus it's free, unlike the parking lot.

Now you know I'm not referring real vampires, just the kind who are registered nurses wielding hypodermics and test vials.

Speaking of mythical people, this newsworthy pic just in from the "what have you done for me lately" department, that I shot on the way into the office:

Guess you're not laughing now, are you Santa? More like "Heave-Ho!" than "Ho! Ho! Ho!".

I guess that proves that anything can be recycled.

I wonder if the guys in the recycling truck are going to tie-wrap him to their front bumper?

Market Lunch

2011-06-01T21:32:00.000-04:00

Ever since my daughter's high school trip to Spain, I have a thing for Spanish olive oil.

The Spaniards have a thing for it themselves, because they certainly don't export much of it. That means you have to go out of your way to find it.

One place where you can find it, and a variety to boot, is at Olive & Épices in the Jean Talon Market. That's where I headed at lunchtime yesterday to pick up some Fuente Baena olive oil produced by Olivarera Nª Sª Guadalupe in Baena, a town of about 20,000 inhabitants in Spain's Córdoba province. Pure heaven in a bottle.

Once I had my prize in hand I grabbed a bite to eat from a tiny Moroccan eatery. My grilled lamb sandwich was as tasty as it was inexpensive.

Parking is at a premium at the market, but not if you ride a scooter.

I like to think that riding a Vespa makes parking even easier because the appeal of the classic Vespa design only adds to the scene, so that a Vespa, parked where cars or motorcycles might be unwelcome, doesn't offend.

In fact it's the opposite. You get smiles and appreciation.

How nice is that?

Too good not to share

2011-05-27T19:41:00.003-04:00

I'm in Calgary at the airport waiting for a flight to Montreal.

I'm returning from a small, intimate, and very important conference where I was an invited speaker.

The conference venue was the Buffalo Mountain Lodge in Banff. The resort looks exactly like what you picture when you hear the name.

A collection of log row-cottages with pitched roofs, huge dormers, and field-stone fireplaces, nestled on the flanks of Tunnel Mountain among stands of lodge-pole pines.

I've been here since Wednesday and there hasn't been a single ray of sun. Until this morning it was all heavy overcast skies and drizzling rain.

In any other place in the world, that is a poor recipe for any kind of good time.

This part of Canada features the most stunning scenery I have been privileged to see in my lifetime, so a little bit of rain only adds another shade to nature's perfect palette.

On the drive into Banff on Wednesday in my rented Ford Focus I took a slight detour.

It was impossible for me not to imagine how great it would be to be riding my Vespa here.

Beautiful twisty roads draped on gentle rolling hills that you get to enjoy all by yourself with virtually no traffic as far as the eye can see.

On Thursday, following my presentation, I had a few free hours to decompress and decided to explore a scenic route I had spotted on the Google Maps application on my Iphone called the Minnewanka Loop. It isn't possible to make a scenic mistake in Banff, and this was certainly no exception.

The road shows incredible promise right from the start, just minutes from Banff village.

A mere 5 kilometers later it's difficult to see Lake Minnewanka without feeling like you have been magically transported to a beautiful but distant and unfamiliar world.

I climb back into the Focus and follow the road. Just beyond the lake, I come upon these two residents grabbing an afternoon nibble by the side of the road.

They seem friendly, but it's a rented, fully insured car, so those horns aren't nearly as intimidating as they might be if I were on my Vespa, or in our BMW.

Veering onto a side road that promises to take me to Johnson Lake, I find a spot to park, and a short walk takes me to the spot where the lake empties into a mountain stream.

I return to the lodge completely refreshed. At dinner I share the photos with some of the delegates.

After dinner, a few of us hang in the lodge's bar until just before midnight taking our time trading tall tales and polishing off a couple of bottles of fine red wine.

This morning, I wake gently and look out the large windows at the end of my room. Beyond the gallery it looks like a dense fog has envelopped the resort. Once I find my glasses I am truly blessed to behold a completely unexpected visual delight.

As you might expect, my scooter commute hasn't been intruding on my thoughts all that much since I left the foothills and got to the Rockies.

There is no word for this country other than breathtaking. If you've never been to Alberta, you owe it to yourself to add it to the list of things that must be experienced.

More about bridges

2011-05-25T19:48:00.002-04:00

I can look out the window and see home (roughly close to shore in the centre of the picture) rapidly receding because I'm in the air again with some time to spare and my Iphone for company.

Nothing says 'fun' like typing out a long-ish blog post on your Iphone. I've got to get a bluetooth keyboard.

You can't live in Montreal without thinking about bridges.

Life on a big island sitting in the middle of a big river imposes that on you.

Even if you live 'off island', you may well live on another nearby island. On another large island like Île Jésus; or a medium-sized one like Île Perrot or Nuns' Island; or a small one like Île Bizard; or a tiny one like Dorval Island (for more on Dorval Island, see my post last year) or Île Verte.

Here's an aerial view of Dorval island.

Even if you live on the 'north shore', the 'south shore', or elsewhere in the Montérégie mainland, if you want to fly to some other place far off, or go the opera, or visit the Jazz Festival or the Comedy Festival, or give birth in a large university hospital, you've got to pick a bridge to get to Montreal proper.

Heck, even if you want to take a break and forget about bridges and islands for a few hours, you'll need to take a bridge to Île Sainte Hélène to get to La Ronde amusement park.

Even though I live and work on the island of Montreal, and spend almost all my time here, my scooter commuting route still requires me to cross the Lachine Canal twice using a bridge in Lachine, and further downtown, the Charlevoix bridge.

My goal this season is to cross more bridges.

Last season the first time I left the island on my Vespa was via the Jacques Bizard bridge to get to... wait for it... Île Bizard.

The first major bridge I crossed was the Galipeault bridge to Île Perrot. Yup, you guessed right, I was 'off island' but still not on the mainland. If you look at the centre of the picture you can see the Galipeault bridge linking the two islands.

To get to the genuine mainland I later took a really serious bridge, the Jacques Cartier, which took me soaring high over Île Sainte Hélene to land in Longueuil on the south shore. You can read that post here.

Each bridge is a unique adventure.

The longer and higher the span... the longer the bridge approach... the faster and heavier the traffic, the greater is the challenge. The challenge makes the experience more memorable, especially when you cross on a Vespa.

This season I added the massive Île aux Tourtes bridge to my list of conquered bridges. The post on that ride is here. The only way to appreciate the size of that six-lane bridge is to see it from the air.

My goal this summer is to add more bridges, and maybe a tunnel.

I want to cross both spans of the Lachapelle bridge to Laval for sentimental reasons (I used to cross that bridge daily growing up in Laval).

I want to cross the Victoria bridge for a bunch of reasons. It's Montreal's first and oldest bridge. It's a technical challenge since it has a metal grid deck, it's a long and narrow sucker, and in it's day, it was a world-class engineering marvel.

Bridges are so special, I'm thinking of setting up a separate page with links to each of the bridge and tunnel posts so that readers can get to all that content from one place.

I may also go back and edit the posts to add more pictures, like these aerial shots I took on my outbound and inbound flights yesterday and today.

That's it for now. My thumbs are killing me. There must be something worth watching on the tube.

What you see...

2011-05-24T21:28:00.002-04:00

As mentioned in an earlier post, this week is not a scooter week, it's a travel week. Today an in-and-out to Toronto for some meetings, then tomorrow off to Banff for an important conference.

If I'm not riding I can always observe.

For instance, there are a lot of scooters in Toronto, and my unscientific taxi-back-seat-survey reveals that a majority of those scooters are Vespas: LXs, ETs, PXs, GTSs, Ss, the whole Vespa alphabet. Seeing is believing. Or is it?

I picked up the current issue of Scientific American to read during my travels. There's a promising article on quantum physics and the emerging theory that quantum effects extend into the macro world, the world we readily observe. For instance, there's a theory that migratory birds "see" magnetic fields as a result of quantum entanglement.

What we see is very dependent on the limits of our visual process.

Case in point.

I was on a DeHavilland Dash 8 turboprop plane and I had a view of the propeller. In flight, you see through the propeller, its outline only faintly visible. I was experimenting with a new camera app for my Iphone (Camera+, recommended by David Pogue, really, really worth the $1.99 and more). What the Iphone saw was something completely different. An alternate view of the reality of the propeller.

The propeller was, at the very same time, appearing one way to the naked eye, and completely differently to the camera lens. It's not a quantum effect, but with my muddled lawyer's brain, it helps me in my own way to relate to the article I was reading, and to Schrodinger's Cat, alive or dead, dead and alive, who can tell?

Which brings me back to riding my Vespa. Nothing bothers me quite so much as not being able to see how I ride. And the thing I most want to observe is how the bike and I perform in the "twisties". How much do I lean? Too much? Not enough? Am I close to scraping the center stand? What will happen if I do? How much traction do I have?

I don't want to find out more about this vital aspect of riding by finding the limit split seconds before low-siding the bike into a ditch, or worse.

But you can't observe yourself in real time. So I don't know about you, assuming you ride, but there's a lot going on in my mind's eye when I'm cornering. I imagine the lean angle, try to sense the traction from the feel of the road, feel the optimal lean angle and where I am in relation to that angle.

The most lean I achieved (I think) was last week going up Camilien Houde parkway, a steep switch-back road that goes up Mount Royal from the east. I was taking the first hairpin after entering the parkway at Mount Royal avenue. Wide open throttle, countersteering in the curve, and man, I was lower than I remember at any previous time. I was thinking "I'm really leaning" and creeping to the forefront was some kind of anticipation of what might happen if I scraped the stand. Would I freak out, in a bad way, would I hit too hard and lose control?

The question I ask myself, is "why push those limits?" Rationally, I think "slow down, enjoy riding through the scenery, enjoy the moment..."

But there's the rub with life on two wheels. There's so much fun in those twisties.

And that's where the saving grace is with my Vespa. My Vespa is to motorcycles, as my Miata is to sports cars: a whole lot of fun, and you don't need to be going ridiculously fast to find the fun. I can do a four-wheel drift in the Miata getting onto an expressway ramp with the pedal to the metal at 6,500 RPM. In a Porsche, I'd need to be going way, way, way faster to launch that drift.

I want my thrills, but at lower speeds, with less risk.

The Vespa's just right for me.

Team breakfast

2011-05-21T00:38:00.006-04:00

Each Friday my colleagues and I take time to have a team breakfast. Each of us takes a turn bringing in something for the group breakfast.

This Friday was my turn.

As I set out for my morning commute, I settled on croissants as the team treat, and on Croissanterie Figaro on the corner of Fairmont and Hutchison as the place I would get them.

I blogged about this cozy neighborhood café last season. It truly is a little slice of Paris tucked away in Outremont.

While my order of two dozen croissants was being put together, I snapped a picture of the café's interior.

Unfortunately, the snapshot, taken with my Iphone, doesn't really do this place justice. The interior is much softer than it appears in the photo, and the picture fails to convey the very theatrical, turn-of-the-nineteenth-century feel that the interior conveys. It really makes me feel like I've been magically conveyed to a neighborhood café in the Quartier Latin of 1900.

I asked for my order (six plain, six cheese, six almond, six chocolate) to be bagged rather than boxed. Good thing I did. In my mind the order was going to fit in the Vespa's topcase.

Not so much. As you can see, that GT parcel hook I installed on my Vespa LX150 really came in handy this morning.

I shifted my laptop to the LX bag hook on the seat, and put the croissants on the GT hook. The GT hook closes on the handles of the bags making them nice and secure. As you can see, this year a BIXI stand has been installed right outside the café.

I used the extremity of the BIXI stand as scooter parking, something that I have been witnessing more and more lately. This phenomenon confirms what I first observed last year.

I headed to the office down Park Avenue, happily cruising with the rush hour traffic at about 65 km/h by Fletcher's Field, up Pine then down Peel to the office.

Mission accomplished. No croissants were harmed on the way.

The wonders of scenery

2011-05-19T10:00:00.000-04:00

That sign says it all.

And this is what it alludes to.

Scenery like this during the morning commute is a large part of the wonder of commuting on a motor scooter.

Dealing with the weather

2011-05-19T09:43:00.001-04:00

I don't set out in the rain.

But that doesn't mean I don't ride in the rain.

This week is a case in point.

The forecast on my Iphone weather app showed solid rain every day this week. Monday and Tuesday bore out that prediction. Wednesday, the weather was not nice by any means, and it did rain a bit, but there was even a brief sunny break in the afternoon, and the roads were, for the most part dry although when I left for work in the morning there was very light precipitation.

The rain that was falling is what I refer to as "spitting" rain. I'm not sure how many people use that term. My mother used to say that. I did find a definition online: "To rain or snow in light, scattered drops or flakes".

So Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were driving days, not riding days.

Today, Thursday, there was rain in the forecast, but this morning, while the skies were cloudy, it wasn't raining and the roads were mostly dry.

If I didn't ride whenever rain might possibly fall, I would miss out on many excellent riding opportunities. So today was a scoot commute.

Halfway to work light intermittent rain began to fall. I pulled over on St-Patrick street where Autoroute 15 crosses way overhead (like five to six stories up) and got my rain jacket out of the pet carrier. Now that I ride with waterproof armored pants, all I need to do is don the Teknic rain jacket.

With the jacket on I was on my way in just a few minutes. Simple. More importantly, I was comfortable and dry.

With the right gear, rain isn't an issue. I moderate my speed and remain vigilant for road hazards like painted traffic signs on the roadway, metal plates, railroad tracks and debris. With those simple precautions riding in wet weather is not a problem at all.

Before I began my scooter commuter adventure, I would always see motorcyclists riding in the rain and think they must be having a terrible sodden time.

I no longer think that.

And what about the commute home? Well that was perfect. Instead of thundershowers that my wife heard about on the radio this morning, I got blue skies, sunshine and the warmest temperatures so far in 2011.

So if you plan to commute, even if you don't plan to ride in the rain, make sure that you always have good rain gear on board. Because as I often hear said, all prediction is difficult, but predicting the future is particularly difficult.

It's days like today that convince me that I must be an optimist.

BIXI, BIXI, BIXI

2011-05-17T19:14:00.002-04:00

I was in Toronto over the weekend for a family occasion and noticed that BIXI bikes are operating there as well (see my earlier post with photos of BIXIs in Washington).

This photo and the other one below were taken while driving through the University of Toronto campus (I wasn't at the wheel, my son was, just in case you think that I've taken texting-and-driving to a whole new level).

Bike share programs are wonderful, and the Montreal flavour is probably the very best of the breed. Solar powered, off the grid, and first class bikes.

In spite of its success, or perhaps because of its success, BIXI is having growing pains, particularly in financing its expansion with sales to New York City, Washington D.C., Toronto, London, and other places that are in the works as well.

I sincerely hope that needed financial assistance will be forthcoming from the City of Montreal town council in short order.

I am among those who believe that we need to change the way we in the U.S. and Canada commute to work. Bicycles and the infrastructure they require to make them an alternate means of urban transportation are important ingredients in the recipe.

Public bike share programs like BIXI send important messages to urban populations where they are implemented:

The community truly cares about its quality of life;
More cars in the downtown core is not an acceptable solution;
Bicycles are a viable and serious means of getting around;
Solutions that consume no fuel, or very little fuel, are by far preferable to those that consume a lot.

It's certain that there is a cost to implementing a bike share program. That cost is very much justified. Implementing a top-notch solution like BIXI makes perfect sense. The quality of the system and its bikes are an important part of the message. It means there's a real commitment to make a change, and it means that the users' experience will be a positive one.

So color me strongly in favour.

May the nay-sayers say what they may, and come what may, I say Yeah!!!!

Oh! And while our municipal politicians are busy exporting our bike share solution to Toronto, they should busy themselves importing Toronto's generous parking solution that makes urban parking free for scooters and motorcycles. Now that would be a step in the right direction here.

As for the scoot commute and me commuting on my Vespa scooter, it's been lean pickings.

The atrocious and unremitting rainy weather means I drive rather than ride.

Next week the scooter drought will continue. I'm in Toronto on business on Monday, then off to Calgary for more business for the remainder of the week.

Being a firm believer, as noted in an earlier post, in the law of averages, I will be due for many fine scootering days in the coming weeks and months.

PS: BIXI got it's funding. Hang in there BIXI!

Spring and the promise of summer

2011-05-14T00:15:00.000-04:00

I returned from Washington to gloomy, rainy weather and a mid-week bout with some kind of stomach flu.

This week was a different story altogether and reaffirms my belief that the law of averages is inexorable in its efficiency. At least this week I'm on the sunny side of the equation.

I took the picture for this post on Wednesday with my Iphone. My usual camera was dead flat when I hauled it out of the Vespa's topcase. So this will have to do.

I took the picture on Mount Royal avenue heading west towards Park avenue. This is one of those magical times in spring that last barely a week or so. The trees are budding and the whole city is bathed in shades of pale green.

I had stopped a few blocks earlier to grab a bite. I sat at a sidewalk table waiting for lunch, taking in the bustling scene on the Plateau, and soaking up the warm sunshine. What a joy.

My trip to the Plateau was to visit the Vespa dealer, Alex Berthiaume, to gawk at bikes, drool over gear, and make an appointment for annual servicing and a new rear tire. The tire on the bike now was plugged to fix a flat and has held up well. It loses about three pounds a day with air slowly leaking at the plug.

I'm looking forward to not having to get down on my hands and knees every few days to pump air in.

As I write this I'm in Toronto for a family occasion. It's late. Nite all.

Finally Free in DC

2011-04-28T00:41:00.021-04:00

Warm, humid, and wonderful. That's how I feel.

I'm fresh from an invigorating walk back from an earlier successful mission to fetch cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcakes.

The cupcakes are treats for Susan and Lauren. Encouraged by my success, I drop the cupcakes off in my room and use the maps app on my Iphone to plan my further evening adventures.

I'm striking out from the hotel further down M street in search of Vidalia. "Fine southern cuisine" is the promise on the restaurant cheat sheet handed to me by the concierge at the Fairmont. I'm thinking that it's high time for some real southern fried chicken which I don't believe I've ever had.

Before satisfying my hunger for comfort food, I set off on another quest. This is, after all, a blog about life on two wheels. If you know the Washington Fairmont, you may think I'm headed for the complimentary BMW bicycles that the hotel offers to its guests.

Not quite my objective.

In the cab on the way in from Reagan National on Monday night, I had spotted a BIXI stand! I knew I just needed to shoot proof that Montreal's public bike share program is alive and well in the heart of democracy. It doesn't take me long to find my quarry.

On my way, I pass a Honda Metroplitan chained to a signpost looking like a forlorn pooch temporarily foresaken by its owner.

It reminds me of my first scootering experience in Victoria, so I snap a shot of it and move on. No time for dawdling, I'm hungry. But as I write this, I have the time to be indulgent. So here's a shot of my very first scooter experience which, inexplicably, I haven't posted before.

Earlier in the evening, heading down M in the other direction, I had spotted a beautiful cream-colored Vespa ET that followed my cab, then filtered ahead, only to disappear down a side street before I could snap a picture.

A few brisk walking minutes later, I spot my prey at the corner of 25th and Pennsylvania Avenue. A genuine real, feels like home, BIXI stand!!. Except here it's capital bikeshare.

But a rose by any other name... is still a BIXI.

Such nice bikes. You just have to love how those sidewalls light up at night.

Where am I? Right! Boy it's 8:45 and I'm starving. But it has begun to drizzle. I swing down Pennsylvania to 24th and back over to the Fairmont to fetch a brolly.

Armed with the loaner umbrella and feeling invincible, I set off down M in search of Vidalia and the promise of chicken.

Five good city blocks later and M has lost virtually all the charm it had in Georgetown from the cupcake store to the bridge just south of the hotel. Now it's kind of office-y, and drugstore-ish, and drabb-ish, and I'm passing restaurants that are mostly closed-ish, with the only source of sustenance a brightly lit McDonalds. If Vidalia is a bust, do I do McDonalds? I shake off the wisp of thought, and forge ahead.

There! Across the street, Vidalia.

I scurry across the street feeling like the scofflaw jay walker that I am. Hey! I'm a Montrealer. We invented jay-walking. It's an art, it's efficient, not a crime, OK?

Hmmm. The restaurant is downstairs. There's a guy sitting on the stairs on his cell, looking a little dejected and, maybe desperate? His back is to me. If he was wearing scruffy clothes, I'd turn around and whistle my way over to Micky D's for chicken nuggets. But this guy's in a suit still. He might be an investment banker, and this might be his first night on the mean streets. I shrug, decide to chance it, and gingerly sidestep him as I head down below street level, into the unknown abyss.

Nice place once you're down here. Now I'm worried that my casual attire or the late hour might earn me a box of McNuggets after all. I glance at my watch and look for anyone else in jeans.

No cause for concern After a brief consult with the powers that be, the hostess offers me a very nice table where I have a view of the bar, and of a private room emitting clinking sounds and occasional polite applause that wafts out of the open frosted glass door and mingles appropriately with the jazz tracks piped in by unseen speakers. Very nice indeed.

I've come to this slice of heaven in spite of the fact that the hoped-for fried chicken is only offered on the lower brow lunch menu. The dinner menu is all braised bison short ribs and crispy duck breast, and foie gras au torchon, and such. Hey, I can shift gears.

My waiter soon presents himself. Very cool-looking dude, all in black jeans and shirt, cornrows, looks like the kind of guy you'd like to have as a cool friend, might own a bar in the islands, with a hint of Jamaica in the tone of his voice, and secretly you know he is way too cool to hang around with the likes of you.

I gingerly mention that I was hoping for real fried chicken, but I know it's not on the menu and would be pleased to indulge in some other southern fare.

My cool dude smiles a nice cool dude smile and encouragingly says he'll have a word with the chef. The chef is way cool too, because they let the menu slide, and in the way I imagine southern comfort to be, indulge my desire.

While I wait, the amuse-bouches that now seem ubiquitous and de rigueur make their way to the starched table cloth before me. Oh my dear Lord, I do believe I have found the ante-room to heaven and I am in it.

I now know this is going to kick ass! A beautiful bent wood Scandinavian-looking breadbasket comes with a miniature trifecta of corn bread, traditional dinner roll, and a Vidalia onion brioche, accompanied by a ramekin duo of whipped Amish butter sprinkled with sea salt and a Vidalia onion marmalade.

Now you're thinking that in my overworked, sleep-deprived, meeting-numbed skull, I have lost all perspective and that nothing can be this good. Dream on you silly reader.

There it now sits.

Three perfect, perfectly trimmed, perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked, perfectly beautiful, impossibly crisp pieces of southern fried chicken, resting on what the cool-dude later described off-handedly, with I assume to be false modesty, as black pepper gravy. He then apologized for having had to substitute Vidalia's signature Mac & Cheese for the promised mashed potatoes, saying that it was just as well, since the chef used heavy cream in equal parts with potatoes in his recipe, so the three cheese Mac & Cheese was the obvious healthy choice.

As you can see, my feast was rounded out by beautifully presented and confit-like collared greens as a vegetable antidote to the other portions of the meal.

Do you get my point that you have to now start planning a visit to DC just so you can eat at Vidalia? Chatting with the owner, I find out that this slice of bliss has been in business for 18 years. That's an elephant age for a restaurant.

It's already tomorrow, and I have to be up at the crack o'dawn. So this post has to come to an end now.

Nite!

Lofty thoughts

2011-04-25T22:54:00.002-04:00

Warmer temperatures are finally forecast for this week.

That's the good news. The not so good news is that rain is also forecast just about every day.

Still, fair weather or foul, warm or cold, bright or dismal, my Vespa will have to wait patiently for me because, as I write this on my trusty Iphone, I'm cruising comfortably in pitch darkness at 32,000 feet heading to Reagan National in Washington DC.

Business meetings and the intense preparation they entail will be the order of the day, dawn to well past dusk. No time to sightsee.

If I stumble on fellow scooter commuters' trusty scoots while I'm at the political epicenter of the earth, I'll try to snap some photos to share here.

That will have to do, and will be as close as I'll come to the scoot commute until Friday.

In the meantime, Steve Williams' thoughtful post giving thanks at Easter, has got me thinking along the same lines.

There's precious little to do anyway. It's a small regional aircraft and the only amenities are pretzels.

In most ways that matter, I'm truly blessed.

It's good to pause and reflect on my good fortune and think of my loved ones as I hurtle through life. I surely don't count my blessings as often as I should.

To my wonderful wife, my daughter and our two sons, my sisters, my father, my brothers in law and sister in law, to my nieces and nephews, and my dear friends, I love each and every one dearly and you are the true source of my happiness.

So begins our final approach.

Good night all, and pleasant dreams.

Life in the slow lane

2011-04-19T22:00:00.003-04:00

Yes it was cold this morning. But with the right gear, and the right scooter, the commute to work can be serene rather than stressful.

Project report: Installing an AdmoreLighting.com auxiliary brake light and turn indicator on a Vespa LX150

2011-04-16T14:46:00.009-04:00

I promised to provide a project report and here it is. I know that many of you will appreciate this and that's why I'm taking the time to do it. It's more work doing the project report than actually doing the project.

Here goes.

This project report shows all the steps I took to install an AdmoreLighting Mini Light Bar LED auxiliary modulating brake light and sequential turn indicator unit on the Vespa OEM topcase on my Vespa LX150 motor scooter.

You'll see that I'm documenting my mistakes and clearly identifying them, so that others doing this project may not make the same mistakes. Not to worry though, there's always a way to get back on track.

Tools

Electrician’s pliers or wire cutter
Needle nose pliers
Wire strippers
Solderless connector crimper
Phillips screw driver
Soldering gun
Heat gun
Electric drill
1/15 Drill bit
9/32 Drill bit
Sharp craft knife, box cutter or scalpel
Voltage meter
A Sharpie fine-point permanent marker

Supplies

Admore Mini Light Bar
Reese (or equivalent) 5-pin flat trailer light electrical harness
1/8", 3/8" and 5/8" black and red Heat shrink wire wrap
Solder
12 gauge wire (to use as a fishing wire)
Solderless butt joint crimp connecters (to correct mistakes, otherwise not needed)
Electrical tape

1. I planned to mount the Admore unit to my topcase.

I wanted to be able to remove the topcase without having to cut wiring connections. The Reese trailer harness provides a good weather proof connector for that purpose.

2. All the wire you’ll need for the installation comes with the Admore unit. What you need to do is separate the wire in two parts, use the electrician’s pliers or wire cutter to cut the wire about 6 or 7 inches from the Admore unit. On my unit there was a label on the wire. Assuming that the labels are in the same place on all units, cut the wire just on the far side of the label, as you see in the photo below.

3. Cut the insulation sheath back a few inches, then strip each of the six wires about 1/4”.

4. Cut the wires leading from each of the Reese trailer plugs about 1 1/2” or 2” from each plug and strip each of the five wires about 1/4”.

5. Take the long section of wire you removed from the Admore Unit and, beginning at the end where you cut the wire, cut the insulation sheath back a few inches, then strip each of the six wires about 1/4”.

6. As instructed in the Admore installation instructions that come from the unit, twist the blue wire and the red wire together.

7. Cut five 1 1/2" lengths of 1/8 inch black heat shrink wrap and fit one on each of the wires you stripped in the preceding step. Since the red and blue wires are twisted together, you only need five pieces for the six wires.

This is where I made the first mistake. I forgot to slip heat shrink wrap onto the yellow wire before soldering it. I unsoldered it, but the solder on the two ends of the wire prevented me from making a new solder joint. So I shifted gears and used a solderless butt joint crimp connecter on the yellow wire. Problem solved. Hopefully by putting the heat shrink on all the wires before you start soldering, you’ll avoid my mistake.

8. Notice that the two trailer plugs are not identical. They are mirror images of one another. One has five female connectors and one male connector, and other has the reverse. On the assumption that one day you’ll want to travel without the topcase, select the plug that has the five female connectors as the one to solder to the long wire.

9. Solder the wires to the trailer plug, matching the colors shown in the following diagram.

Click on the diagram to get a full size view. You should probably also print the diagram out now, because you’ll be needing it later at the Vespa end of things.

Take care not heat the shrink wrap when you're soldering the wires. In my case, I did cause a small bit of the shrink wrap to contract. I used the box cutter (in my case, my scalpel [don’t ask, I’m a lawyer, not a doctor]) to cut away that small bit to allow the tubing to slide over the joint.

10. Slide the heat shrink tubing over each solder joint so that each joint is insulated.

11. Use the heat gun to shrink the tubing.

12. Starting from the other end of the long wire, slide an 8” or 9” piece of 3/8” heat shrink onto the wire and run it all the way to where the trailer plug is soldered on. Bend the wires at the plug to bring them as close as possible to the plug, and slide the tubing as close as possible to the plug. In my case, my scooter is Dragon Red, so I used red shrink tubing. Since this piece of the wire will run from the scooter body to the topcase in plain sight, the red helps it look less obvious. Just esthetics.

13. Use the heat gun to shrink the tubing.

14. Now carefully remove all the visible original black sheath off the wire and carefully separate the six colored strands. Use your knife to cut away the fabric strands. The easy way to remove the sheath is to slice it open where the shrink tubing ends, Get a hold on the six wires, and just pull them out of the sheath. You won’t be needing the sheath, so discard it.

15. Time to test your electrical skills. Connect the two trailer plugs, the one you just soldered to the long wire, and the one you’re about to solder to the Admore unit. Using a volt meter, check each wire for continuity between the very end of the long admore unit wire, to the stripped wires of the second trailer plug, the male one, making sure that all the connections work. Congratulations, you passed your amateur electrician’s test.

16. Now that you’ve soldered five joints successfully, you can tackle soldering the other trailer plug.

17. Select the remaining trailer plug that has the five male connectors as the one to solder to the short wire coming from the Admore unit.

18. Slide a piece of 3/8” heat shrink onto the wire from the Admore unit and run it all the way to the unit. Make sure that the tubing is about 2” shorter than the sheath on the Admore unit wire.

19. As instructed in the Admore installation instructions that come from the unit, twist the blue wire and the red wire from the unit together.

20. Cut five 1 1/2" lengths of 1/8 inch black heat shrink wrap and fit one on each of the wires that come from the unit. Since the red and blue wires are twisted together, you only need five pieces for the six wires.

21. Solder the wires to the trailer plug, matching the colors shown in the diagram above. Take care not heat the shrink wrap. In my case, unbelievably, I made exactly the same mistake with the yellow wire. There must be something in my brain with yellow.

22. Slide the heat shrink tubing over each solder joint so that each joint is insulated.

23. Use the heat gun to shrink the five pieces of tubing.

24. Bend the wires at the plug to bring them as close as possible to the plug, and slide the black tubing down from the Admore unit as close as possible to the plug.

25. Use the heat gun to shrink the tubing.

26. Finally, all the lab tinkering is done. What you now have is the Admore unit, terminating at the five-pin male trailer plug, and the other half of the wiring harness, terminating at the five-pin female trailer plug.

Now it’s time to head out to the scooter.

27. Park the scooter in the center of your work space. Set up some good task lighting. If, like me, you’re working in a cold garage, lay a blanket down at the back of the scooter.

28. Open the topcase, and remove the mat that lines the bottom. Remove the large center screw, and then remove the topcase from the rack. Bring the topcase indoors to your work bench or kitchen table.

29. Open the seat and remove the pet carrier bucket. Using the Phillips screw driver, remove the screw from the battery cover and remove the battery cover. Make sure that you have a container to hold the screws you remove.

30. Remove the screws that secure the plastic cover that surrounds the battery and the gasoline (petrol, for my UK readers) filler tube.

31. Remove the gas (petrol) cap and gently lift off the plastic cover. Once removed, replace the cap on the filler tube so that you don’t have to breathe in the high octane as you work, unless you like that smell and grew up sniffing gas for kicks. No, seriously, put the cap back on.

32. Next, still using the same screw driver, remove the single screw holding in each turn indicator light, pull the housing out, and let the housings dangle from their wires.

33. Remove the two screws that hold the tail light in place, and remove the tail light, letting it dangle from its wires as well.

34. Get the five Posi-Tap wire tapping gizmos out of the Admore unit parts bag, and install them onto the wires leading from the Vespa light housings following the wiring diagram above.

35. Take the wiring harness terminating at the five-pin female trailer plug you completed in step 25, separate out the yellow and green wires.

36. Take piece of 1/8” heat shrink tubing as long as each of the wires, less about an inch, and slide one piece each onto the yellow wire, and the green wire.

37. Use the heat gun to shrink the tubing. These wires will be fairly exposed to the elements inside the scooter’s body and that’s the reason for the extra protection.

38. Now, looking down at the scooter from above, you’ll see that between the battery compartment and the back of the scooter body, there is an opening. You’ll be feeding the three wires headed to the tail lamp through that hole. On the opposite side of that hole, you’ll see an unused screw hole that leads into the battery compartment. Thread the green and yellow wires from the hole at the back of the scooter, over the lip of the battery compartment, through the screw hole, and into the battery compartment. Sounds confusing, but with the help of the photo, and seeing your Vespa, you’ll see what I mean. Easy-peezy.

39. Thread the yellow wire from the battery compartment, through the chassis hole nearest to the shock absorber screw, and down and through the left turn indicator opening.

40. Do the same with the green wire, down and through the right turn indicator housing. You’ll see that the inside of the scooter is pretty exposed and messy with road dirt and grime, and that’s why you added the extra insulation.

41. Mount each of those wires to the Posi-Tap connectors that you installed at the turn indicator light housings in step 33.

42. Now it’s time to tackle the part that took me the longest time until I figured a path out. Fishing the remaining wires to the tail light.

43. Turn your attention to the place where the tail light attaches to the scooter. You’ll see that the wires come through a black rubber grommet.

Use your fingers or a pair of needle-nose pliers to pull the grommet out. Slide the grommet back to the tail light housing that’s dangling free. Now you can clearly see the rectangular hole into the scooter body.

44. Get a three or four foot length of fairly stiff wire. I used 12 gauge automotive wire, and it did the trick nicely. Beginning at the opening at the top of the scooter, thread the wire into the opening and down towards where the tail light assembly is. It takes a wee bit of trial and error, but eventually, you’ll catch a glimpse of the wire through the rectangular hole at the tail light end. In the picture below, you can see the yellow 12 gauge wire going into the opening, and then coming out at the tail light end.

45. Using the needle-nose pliers, grab the wire and pull it through. Now, the toughest part of this project is done.

46. Moving back to the opening at the top of the scooter, using electrical tape, tape the four remaining wires from the Admore unit wiring harness you made (the purple, black, blue and red wires) to the 12 gauge wire. Moving to the tail light opening, gently pull the 12 gauge wire out through the rectangular opening until the Admore unit wires have been pulled through. Here's a picture of the harness wires once they were pulled through the tail light hole, still taped to the 12 gauge wire.

47. You can now remove the excess length of the Admore unit wires. Cut the four wires so that you have enough to make the connections to the Posi-Tap connectors that you installed earlier at the tail light housing.

48. Feed the four Admore wires through the rubber grommet, then push the rubber grommet back into place to seal the rectangular hole.

49. Twist the red and blue Admore unit wires together, and then connect them to the Posi-Tap connector connected the Vespa wire with the black and yellow stripe.

50. Similarly, connect the black Admore Unit wire to the black Vespa wire, and the remaining purple Admore unit wire to the Vespa wire with the black and white stripe.

51. We’re almost done with the Vespa-side wiring. Here's a photo of the new wiring harness with the battery compartment housing re-installed.

But before buttoning the scooter back up, it’s best to run a test. Take the Admore unit and plug it in. Make sure the kill switch is in the run position. Turn on the ignition. The Admore unit should light up as a running light. Now turn on the left, then right turn indicators. The Admore sequential turn indicators should work. Make sure the unit is right-side up so that the left indicator is on the left side. Now apply one of the brakes. The brake light should modulate, then stay on. Release the brake and then re-apply it. The brake light should come back on, but without modulating.

Here's a video of the test I did.

53. You won’t re-install the underseat compartment parts just yet. Let’s move on to the topcase end of things.

54. In the comfort of your kitchen or workshop, turn the topcase upside down. Take the Admore unit mounting bracket and figure out where you want to place it.

Here’s where I made another mistake. I judged the location of the holes from the outside of the topcase. Inside the topcase you’ll see that there’s a kind of trough that runs around the perimeter. I ended drilling the holes a little too close to the edge of the trough. I couldn’t get the supplied Admore mounting screws to sit flat as a result. What I did was to mount the screws from below, with the nuts inside the topcase, and there was barely enough room. I was lucky. Make sure that the holes you drill as well within the “trough” so that there’s room to let the screw heads or nuts lie flat, whichever you prefer.

55. On the outside of the topcase, use the permanent marker to mark the two mounting holes.

56. Using the point of your sharp knife, make a small dimple in the topcase in the center of the mark, to give your drill a place to “bite”.

57. Using your electric drill and your smallest drill bit (I used a 1/15 bit), drill pilot holes. The topcase material drills nicely, I found that a low speed worked best.

58. Switch to a 9/32 bit, and drill out the two holes.

59. Using the screws provided with the Admore unit, mount the bracket to the topcase, and then mount the Admore unit to the bracket.

60. Now re-attach the topcase to the Vespa, and plug in the Admore unit.

61. Push any excess wiring harness wire into the opening at the top of the scooter.

62. Remove the gas (petrol) cap, and, taking care not to pinch any wires, put the plastic housing that surrounds the battery compartment back on the Vespa. You’ll see that there is a tab that fits into the hole you used to fish the wires down to the tail light. That tab now has to share the hole with the wiring harness for the Admore unit. That’s also the recess where the seat latch fits in. So there’s now a lot going on in that hole. As you re-install the housing, make sure you don’t pinch any wires, and use your finger to poke the wiring harness wires to the side, so they remain clear of the laching mechanism. Once that bit of fiddling is done with, screw the housing down securely, taking care not to over tighten any screws.

63. Drop the pet carrier bucket back into place, close the seat, and, finally, this project is done.

64. Take a moment to congratulate yourself, admire the wonderful light show at the back end of your Vespa, show off your handiwork to your significant other, and then go for a ride.

Pheww... that was more work than actually doing the project. I hope you will find the project report useful.

WOT to the Bridge

2011-04-10T06:35:00.007-04:00

It's Friday and I'm stuck in the office waiting for a meeting with VIPs that never actually happens. My wife and I are invited to dinner at the home of close friends who live just off the western tip of the island in Vaudreuil.

It's 6:15 and I'm still downtown. If I take my usual scenic southern route that hugs the lake, I estimate that I won't be able to make it to our friend's house until 7:45.

I roll out of the underground garage at 6:20 and decide to swing north, straight up the mountain on Peel to Pine, then west over to Cote des Neiges, over the mountain and down to Jean Talon, west to Lucerne, and north to highway 40.

Highway 40 is Montreal's major east-west expressway. Late last season I chanced riding the 40 for a couple of exits, and that's my only experience so far.

Traffic has been light and I've made really good time. Heading through the Décarie traffic circle, I'm debating whether to stick to the service road or hop on the expressway.

The Vespa's clock on the dash is indicating 6:40, but I know it's running five minutes fast and I make a mental note to adjust it. I don't want to hold up dinner, so I take the first on-ramp and open the throttle wide.

The Vespa LX150's speedometer reads a steady 65 miles per hour. I know i'm doing more like 57 or so based on past experience with GPS comparisons, but I'm pacing traffic in the right hand lane, and even need to roll off the throttle from time to time to keep my distance. So I decide to stay put on the expressway.

I'm really eating up the miles at this pace. A few eighteen wheelers slowly pass in the middle lane. I brace for buffeting each time. While there is some, once the truck is about 100 feet ahead, it's not dramatic. The Vespa cruises along like a champ.

As the western tip of the island looms, so does one of my milestone challenges: the long six lane bridge that spans the Lake of Two Mountains.

I'm getting set for the adrenaline rush of crossing that bridge at wide open throttle. Last season the Ile aux Tourtes Bridge seemed like a challenge I might never dare to take.

As I cruise down the long slope on the far side of the span, I'm sufficiently comfortable to take in the spectacular view of the lake far into the distance to my left and right. The Vespa is doing an indicated 68 mph.

I take the next exit. There is a good crease in the road where the concrete expressway lane transitions to the asphalt of the exit ramp. There is a momentary squirm as the Vespa negotiates the crease. I'm alert, and very focused, but not intimidated. As I cruise along the ramp gradually decelerating to the speeds I normally ride at, I realise how far my riding skills have progressed.

The weather for this ride is great. Clear skies and a comfortable 11 Celsius. Before leaving the office I had removed the liner from my Tourmaster Caliber pants and I'm glad I did. The windshield makes the ride very comfortable. I've had my visor up and my collar open the whole time without the least discomfort.

When I ring the doorbell at 7:05, everyone is shocked to see me so soon. My wife had only arrived minutes before me and figured she would have to wait another 45 minutes or an hour for my arrival.

If you're concerned that you won't get to see the end of my new Admore light unit installation, no worries. I'll return to that project just as soon as I can and post all the details.

Auxiliary Modulating Brake Light

2011-03-31T22:53:00.015-04:00

What a mouthful that is.

But that's what Canada Post delivered right on time this morning. That, and much more.

This post will be all about installing the AdmoreLighting Mini LED Light Bar on my Vespa.

On the weekend I moved this project along by going to Canadian Tire and picking up a trailer wiring harness. Specifically, a Reese 5-pin flat male and female plug set. The reason I need the harness is to allow the Admore to be unplugged. It will be mounted to the bottom of the topcase and unless I include a means of unplugging it, I won't be able to remove the topcase without digging into the scooter to undo wiring, or cutting the wires.

Once I had the Reese wiring harness, I needed to plan out the connections. So here's my plan:

I know, you're intrigued but the plan is so small, you can't make anything out. If you click on it you'll get a much better view.

It's now Tuesday, April 12, 2011, and I finally had a little time to devote to this project. The first thing I wanted to do was to test the unit to make sure it works, before I launch into the permanent installation.

I began my preliminary test by removing the Vespa's tail light and turn indicator light housings. Nothing could be easier or quicker. One screw each for the turn indicators, and two screws for the tail light. The first thing that became obvious is that my wiring diagram above is correct, but the Vespa wire colors are not quite. I'll update the diagram with the correct colors before this post is final.

The Admore folks provide really idiot proof wire taps that make tapping into the tail light and turn indicator lights a real breeze. So that's what I did. And it worked so flawlessly that I couldn't resist sharing a video of the test with you. So here it is:

Here's a photo to show where the Admore unit will be mounted to the Vespa OEM topcase.

I got this modification finished last night, Thursday, April 14, 2011.

I first taped the unit to the topcase then parked the scooter in the street with my car a few car lengths back and sat in the driver's seat to make sure that I was able to see both the original tail light and the new Admore unit. Once I was satisfied that mounting the unit under the topcase was the right way to go, I set to work dismantling, cutting, stripping, soldering, fishing, connecting, drilling, screwing and re-mantling the whole shooting match. And there you have it, a really nice safety addition to my Vespa LX150.

What I'm going to do now is write up a project report for the Modern Vespa website and I'll use that to put up a new post here on the blog, with all the kinks worked out.

So you no longer have to continue watching this post, all you need to do is keep a watchful eye out for the final project post. With a little luck, I'll have that done by Sunday evening. [Ed.: did that by Saturday :) click here to go there]

First commute of 2011

2011-03-29T22:15:00.000-04:00

Rather than trying to force the march of time to get to April 1st, which is, after all, a fool's errand, I launched the scoot commute this morning.

Was it cold? Minus three Celsius or 27F is hardly the kind of weather that drives scooter sales.

As you can see, there is no shortage of ice on the lakeshore.

On a positive note, the Cuppini windscreen and Corazzo winter gauntlets did a decent job in preventing my hands from being thoroughly chilled. The fact that the gauntlets are too snug doesn't help ward off the cold though.

The Tourmaster Caliber pants did a wonderful job. Absolutely no chill on my legs whatsoever. They are very comfortable to wear on the bike. They do add a good deal of bulk, but overall, I am very pleased and I am confident that they will become second nature before long. The fact that they are both suitably protective and waterproof is a really big plus. The pockets are a really nice touch. The only thing that remains to be done is to finish adjusting the position of the knee armor. I have nothing but good things to say as far as the pants are concerned.

The Corazzo underhoody also did its job very well. I didn't wear the hood on my head as a helmet liner, rather I used it more like a turtleneck to keep the wind from my neck. I could not feel any gap between my full face helmet and the collar of the Corazzo 5.0 jacket, so I am really very pleased on that score also. No doubt the windscreen was effective there as well. There was a little coolness, particularly on my back, which I didn't experience in the past. I think the windscreen creates a backdraft (pardon the pun). Not unpleasant, and not enough to cause any upper body chill.

I guess I'll sign off this post with another shot of the waterfront in Lachine near the entrance to the Lachine Canal at the eastern end of Lake St-Louis.

Happy First-Post Day!

2011-03-28T00:01:00.011-04:00

Today is the one year anniversary of my first post on Life on two wheels, the scoot commute.

If you've never blogged, you might want to give it a try. The only requirement is to have something you believe to be worth sharing with the world. The more you believe in it, the easier it is.

It helps if you enjoy writing, if you know a little about computers, a tiny bit about editing html, if you are comfortable with digital photography and video, moving JPGs around, and perhaps posting to YouTube; but none of those things should stop you if you don't think you have the skills. There's nothing like trial and error.

Now let's talk about the cost. It's free!

So, if there's something you want to contribute to the rest of humanity, step into the blogosphere, there's nothing to fear, trust me.

Of course the best advice I can give is never, never, ever, post something to the cloud (the new, and certainly not the last buzzword for the 'Net) that you aren't prepared to live with publicly for the rest of your natural life, and burden your relatives with probably well after you're gone.

So be kind, and if you have nothing nice to say, by all means say nothing.

Pick a topic that has as little as possible to do with your job. I mean the one that involves someone else paying you good money so you can buy groceries and afford a roof over your head.

Oh, and be patient. Depending on the topic you choose, you may write for weeks and months with no one reading. But, trust me, readers like you will eventually stumble on your posts, and if your thoughts strike a chord in other similarly-minded people, you'll have an audience.

If I haven't managed to convince you to stay away from here by now, then pull up a mouse and a keyboard, snuggle up to your tablet, computer or smart phone, and settle in. If you throw in your e-mail address to the subscription window on the right, my musings will go straight to your e-mail account whenever I have something new to share.

Not to worry though, the Google folks who own Blogger have sworn not to be evil, so they don't let me see who is subscribed, so I'll be none the wiser whether you follow me or you don't, or if you start, then stop, then start again.

So be free, express your life, and stay tuned, there's more of this blog to come!

Caged commutes & scoots

2011-03-26T11:11:00.001-04:00

I'm more than ready, but the weather has me caged for the commute, peering out at unwelcome snow doing its best not to rain on the morning parade.

My trusty scoot is waiting patiently in the garage, caged, but ready to roll.

So where in the name of all that's worthy on this good earth is our blessed Spring?

Life on two wheels is clearly eager to get it on. Witness the truckload of BIXI stands on the cusp of deployment this morning.

OK, no more whining.

April 1, ready or not, here I come.

Launch - 7

2011-03-21T20:29:00.003-04:00

Mother nature throws a spanner in the scooter works. Launch of the scoot commute still another week away.