My morning commute has officially changed. This was the first morning I rode to work in the scooter. All in all, things went fine. I was able to leave a little bit later than normal and still arrived at work at the normal time. Of course, it wasn’t without it’s issues:<\/p>\n
1 – I discovered that the scooter isn’t too keen on being started at sub-freezing temperatures. I also discovered it’s rather chilly to be going 30MPH without a windsheild and roof (and heater).<\/p>\n
2 – Scooters aren’t as flexible as bicycles. You have to take corners more widely since the handlebar column doesn’t turn as widely as a bicycle handlebar. This also makes is damn near impossible to park. Bringing it to the bike rack is a pain in the ass. Unlike a bicycle, you can’t lift the scooter to allign perfectly with the bike rack. It’s a game of forward, backward, forward, backward, forward, backward….<\/p>\n
3 – Technically, a scooter is considered more of a bicycle than a car so you’re supposed to follow bicycle rules. for example, you’re allowed to drive up along side of cars that are stopped in traffic. However, the scooter is too big to fit beside the cars so I had to follow traffic. Even more confusing are stop lights. Am I required to stop until green? Or, like a bicycle, can I go if there’s no traffic?<\/p>\n
4 – Even with very short-cropped hair, you end up with helmet head. <\/p>\n
This is going to take some getting used to. It doesn’t help that I’ve always been reluctant to accept change in my routine. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’ve always been a fan of public transit. I’d take that over driving a car any day. And, if Randy and I buy a place closer to public transit (one of my two requirements, the other being a second bathroom), I’d gladly sell the scooter and start using the subway again.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, if you’re commuting in the Cambridge\/Somerville area, watch out for me. I’m not fully skilled at scooter-maneuvering just yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My morning commute has officially changed. This was the first morning I rode to work in the scooter. All in all, things went fine. I was able to leave a little bit later than normal and still arrived at work at the normal time. Of course, it wasn’t without it’s issues: 1 – I discovered […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}