Scooter in the Sticks: Riding and Photography

Scooter in the Sticks: Riding and Photography

For some folks, motorcycling is a hobby. This goes for scooters as well, of course. For others two-wheels are a lifestyle. Something about slimming down to essentials, breaking out of the "cage" and STAYING out. Seems like scooterists are even more extreme in this regard than motorcyclists. Mainstream society GETS motorcycles, the speed, the power, the machismo, even if they don't totally agree with it. (Which why to most, the hobbyists make more sense than the lifestyle riders.) But scooters... let it suffice to say that mainstream society is only starting to realize why one might want be a fair-weather scooterist (economy, practicality, maybe an adolescent "fun" factor,) so the lifestyle or foul-weather scooterist is even more of an anomaly. (Of course on the very extreme edges of this continuum are the lifestyle moped kids, probably the baddest, most hardcore of the two-wheel freaks out there.)
Steve Williams, the author of Scooter in the Sticks, is a great example of how adopting scootering out of a sense of practicality (perhaps peppered with some unconventional style) can turn into an obsession that effects many other seemingly irrelevant aspects of one's life. He seems a fairly normal, close to middle aged man, not a hipster kid who turns to scootering out of the constraints of a bohemian pocketbook, and desire for retro-cool. So his blog is to me, a particularly interesting study in how the scooter obsession can blossom in anyone. (It doesn't hurt that he writes with an eloquent self-effacing style, and includes a lot of beautiful photographs in his blog.)
The Dragon says check it out!

My two passions and a new path. Since I bought the scooter my photography has taken a decidedly Vespa direction. My camera points less frequently at the Pennsylvania landscape except as a backdrop for a portrait of the scooter. My wife Kim appears in fewer photographs that was the case for the past ten years. I sold my 8x10 Zone VI field camera and all related gear because I could not see hauling it around on the scooter (I still had a truck mind you). The darkroom is a seldom-visited place as I now seem to be shooting digital color almost exclusively. The Vespa seems to have turned my photographic pursuits upside down.I've found the only way to get a handle on problems is just jump in and work. I often don't follow that advice but in this instance I have made a decision to write, ride, and photograph and not question the results. Already I have seen the flame of desire flicker to pick up the camera more often when the scooter is not in sight. I'll use this blog to report the results as I go. Immersion is the plan. Who knows where it will lead.