Author: Michael

So, the kid who hit my car (well, his dad, probably) took two weeks to return phone calls from his insurance company. But he finally called and accepted full responsibility!

I’m getting a pay-out!

When I woke up Monday morning, I started thinking of metaphors for how my body felt. Beat with baseball bats, played football without pads… but eventually, I settled on "I feel like I was hit by a truck." Which is, I think, a stunningly apt metaphor.

Conveniently, Sunday afternoon, I swung by the Vespa boutique on First & Denny. I went to get a new Halo reflector for my helmet–my current one was so stretched, that it kept falling down around my neck on the Monkey Run ride. At the same time, I figured I’d get the name and number of the "official" Vespa repair shop in Seattle. I had no idea I would actually need that information just six hours later.

Big People Scooters–the recommended Vespa shop–gave me the bad news this afternoon. See the circled gap in the photo to the right (click to enlarge)? That’s a weld point on the frame. Apparently, this is irreparable. To repair my bike, the shop would first need to buy a new frame and get it painted ($2,800). Then, they take everything off my old bike–from engine and wheels to seat and mirrors–and put it on the new frame. That would probably cost another $750. With the towing charges ($300) and 11,430 miles, it’d make more sense to get a new bike.

In short, my little scoot is TOTALED.

So unless the parents of the kid who pulled left in front of me can cough up $3,500 to buy me one of the two used ET4s currently listed on Craigslist, I get to file the police report and have my insurance company sue them. If I don’t hear back from them by mid-day tomorrow, I’ll send in the report.

Filling out the report, I had to measure how far the accident was from a landmark. Google maps is SO useful. I just searched for 520 2nd Avenue W, Seattle WA and zoomed in on the satellite pictures. One-hundred and seventy five feet from the intersection, according to the scale.

God, that kid must have been stoned or something not to have seen me. Take a look at the attached map I shamelessly stole from Google. I was the red line. He was the green line. No other traffic, straight road, and he turns left right in front of me. He even used his turn signal.

Duncan from the VBClassic team summed up how I feel perfectly today. "They took your stuff, and you want it back." It’s true. I mean, it wasn’t theft, but my stuff was taken from me, and I want it back. That’s it.

Then he told the story of how he trashed his wife’s parked car pulling out of his own driveway. 🙂

Two last pics: my little scoot in the red rock desert, and one from the last time I’ll see it.

I’m fine. Just bruised. My Vespa starts beautifully. Just looks bad.

Kid driving an SUV with three of his buddies in the car turned left in front of me. Narrow road, no where I could go. A few more feet, and my brakes would have stopped me.

I decided to go on the Monkey Run ride to Port Townsend (via Whidbey Island–see the shamelessly stolen Google map right) yesterday. Monkey Run is a camping rally, and with my tent and sleeping bag in storage… no, it’s more that I was worried the Seattle scooter crowd would be as annoying as the San Francisco crowd, and I didn’t want to commit to an entire weekend with them until I knew. But I thought it would be fun to go a part of the way and scoot on Whidbey Island. I figured I would turn around before getting on the second ferry to Port Townsend.

I had trouble finding the starting point. There are, by my count, six distinct and unconnected Fifth Avenues in Seattle: northwest, northeast, west, south, southwest and normal. I discovered this useful fact the day after the ride. I was only able to find two Fifth Avenues on the map the morning of the ride, and neither was the right one. I finally stopped for directions 20 minutes before the ride was supposed to leave. Not that I was worried: I’ve never seen a scooter ride leave earlier than 20 minutes after the published starting time. Forty-five minutes late seems normal.

So I was more than a little bit shocked that, when I arrived 10 minutes before the published departure time, everyone was putting on their helmets and starting their scooters. I had barely enough time to run across the street, buy a Twix bar, and stuff one half of its chocolatey goodness in my gob before the ride took off (I hadn’t had breakfast yet and was planning to do so during the 30 to 40 minutes I expected to wait for the ride to start).

Then came the next bit of shock. Everyone rode calmly in two staggered lines just like they teach you. People weren’t jockeying for position or trying to get to the front of the pack at every stop sign. No one tried to gun through the center of the staggered lines, and no one raced past the pack in the shoulder. They were just riding.

Taking my scooter on the ferry to Whidbey Island was really cool. I’ve never had my scoot on a boat. Not much else to say about it, though.

At the Port Townsend ferry, three other riders–CJ, Kelly and Angelika–turned around and headed back to the city as well. Angelika told me that the Vespa Club of Seattle actually has rules on how to ride. I guess they enforce them somehow. It was great. CJ (unlike the San Francisco CJ, she is a woman and does not bleed two-stroke oil) also invited me to a scooter barbecue that evening. A barbecue at someone’s house in a nice neighborhood with a fantastic view, good (free) food, no annoying ska music, and conversations that went beyond the restoration of rusted out Vespa hulks from the 1960s.

Not that I’m opposed to restoration of rusted out Vespa hulks from the 1960s. I think that’s pretty cool. I just don’t want to talk about it for more than five minutes.

I think I may actually like this scooter crowd.