If you want to dance...

 

... you have to pay the fiddler.

Those words were spoken to me by an Iowa Highway Patrol officer when I was 17... and he was writing out a speeding ticket for me.  For full disclosure: I was not dancing, and if there was a fiddler around, I didn't see or hear him.  Perhaps it was a simile?  Regardless, that phrase has stayed with me 5 decades later.

Out for some scooter time today.  Joan asked where I wanted to ride... "How 'bout across the causeway, up and down the island, then out for some 'Ainta Mountain Road' time?  Joan would rather avoid the island on weekends.  She said, "How about the road where the dogs always chase us?"  Not my idea of fun; one of these days, they're gonna catch us.

 I asked about riding by the Turning Basin - something sizeable got towed in this morning while I was out on a bicycle ride.  It's a start.

 

From there, it was out to "Ainta Mountain Road" - our local ride instead of "Iron Mountain Road" in the Black Hills.  No hills, nothing resembling a good curve... but, the road surface is smooth; not an easy thing to find on a Farm to Market Road around here.  So, we ride it.

Along the way, we stopped in Laguna Vista for a photo op...

You can really see the differences when the scoots are parked like that: the Xmax has bigger wheels than the Vespa.  A longer wheelbase, too.  The Vespa has a "step through," the Xmax has a "step over" frame.  The fairing/windshield on the Xmax sits further forward; it has a motorcycle fork, where the front suspension on the Vespa is a single attachment, more like an airplane landing gear.

I got in there for some size perspective...

That is the Laguna Madre (bay) in the background.  A beautiful clear day here, the temp was in the low 70s while we were riding.  Well, I have to assume that's where the temperature was... Vespa doesn't have an outside air temperature readout on their late model GTS bikes.  Yes, my previous Vespa had a thermometer; it wasn't the most accurate: 2 to 5º warmer than the readout on Joan's bike.  I miss having that, though.

"So, what about this dancing and fiddler stuff," you ask?  Thanks for asking.  No, I didn't get a speeding ticket with the new Vespa.  On our way home today, we stopped to fuel up the scoots.  Joan got 88mpg on her Xmax; I got 70mpg with the Vespa.  That's down 5mpg from the first tank.  It seems that someone did some "roll-on racing" with these scoots.  Probably not the best way to get good mileage.  ;-)  But, it was fun.  I think the worst I got on the other Vespa was 72mpg... which improved when I put more miles on it.  And, really improved when we took the scoots to the Black Hills where they could get non-ethanol fuel.

I'll probably go a bit easier with this next tank.  ;-)  So, "the fiddler" may be playing a slower tempo.