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Broom Broom

January 22nd, 2018 · Posted by Skuds in Life · No Comments · Life

The nippy little Peugeot Kisbee

This weekend I added to my list of travel options for getting around town, by buying a scooter. I intend to keep the mighty Vulcan for cycling, and and intend to walk into the town centre some of the time, but its nice to have a bit more choice, especially when I am in a hurry.

Yes it probably is a bit midlife crisis, but in a sensible sort of way.I am still just a bit amazed that, legally, I can get on one of these and ride off on the roads, without any L plates, despite having never ridden any sort of motorbike or scooter before, which is the position I found myself in yesterday. I bought it in Horley so my very first experience of riding any sort of two-wheeled motorised transport was to go eight miles in the pouring rain.

I do actually have a CBT session paid for – a Christmas present from Jayne – but I was waiting for better weather before scheduling it. I know it sounds a bit arse-about-face to ride around before doing the training, but I thought I would try and get used to being on the road first then when I do the CBT I can just concentrate on all the gears and stuff on a ‘proper’ bike.

It is possible that, having done the CBT, I will decide to go for a full licence and get something bigger, but since my horizons at the moment are no further than the boundaries of Crawley 50cc ought to be more than enough for the forseeable future.

The real surprise was arranging insurance. I went to the meerkat site and got some quotes for just me, and then decided to see what the difference would be if I added Jayne as a rider, and doing that knocked £1 off the quote. So now we are both insured and we both have the choice of car, bicycle or scooter to go places.

Buying the thing was funny though. I really had to stop myself from launching into Richard Herrings infamous motorcycle clothing shop sketch, but it turned out even stranger than that because I appear to have an enormous head which wouldn’t even fit in the biggest XXL helmet in the shop. The only option was an open-face helmet, which I actually prefer, and will be fine in the summer, but it was a bit awkward in the cold rain we had this weekend.

Still. I got home without crashing or coming off, which I consider to be a good result.

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