Those of you of a certain age and political bent will immediately recognize the title as part of Arlo Guthrie’s cleverly named The Motorcycle Song from 1967. While not one of Young Arlo’s most famous ditties, and arguably confirms the contention that drugs were the problem, it has nonetheless persisted in my consciousness, lo these fifty-nine years, to finally be harvested as the title of this post.
While resurrecting old memories with alarming facility is often coupled with a free-fall in other cognitive processes, I can assure you, in this instance at least, that is not the case. Today, instead, I hope to purge that earworm entirely by relating how, despite all that I have learned, everything that I have experienced, and all my attempts at personal growth and improvement…
… I haven’t changed one bit.
In this instance, I blame Bangkok. Not Thailand in general but Bangkok – the original City of Angels – directly, specifically, and without apology.
But to understand why, I must take you back to the very beginning. To those Sparkling Days of Yore when I, partially freed from parental determinism, finally hit the road. Thankfully my parents, being more concerned with my survival than my safety, provided not the well-padded, participation trophy crusted, hermetically sealed cocoon so favored by more recent generations, but the opportunity to venture forth with all manner of sharp, toxic, reactive, and concussive playthings to figure out how they work and why I should be careful. This formative mindset, because I survived it, proved to be very useful in later life.
The year this child-raising philosophy hit its peak was when we were visiting relatives and one of my parents handed me the keys and said something to the effect of “Here. It’s time you learned to drive.” I was fourteen. To be fair, and by way of full disclosure, at that point in time I already knew how to drive. I had started – shifting, steering, watching for cops, from the seatbelt-less front seats in a variety of vehicles both Detroit Iron and those crazy VW Beetles that were new to the suburbs – several years earlier and, by the time I was twelve and could reach the pedals, seated behind the wheel with parental supervision from about eight feet away in the passenger seat.
So, I snatched the keys, fired up our Ford Country Squire station wagon with more interior volume than the crew capsule on Artemis II, and headed for the hills. I was able to do this because the relatives we were visiting were in the branch of the family that stayed in farming and had about forty acres I could drive around on dirt tracks more used to handling tractors than the soft-shocked, suburban scow I was piloting.
As I was tootling around, and through, the almost-ready-to-harvest corn, I had my Saul on the Road to Damascus moment. My epiphany. I could get used to this. Everything since is the fruit of that tree planted in my subconscious by my parents all those decades ago. All the road trips. All the changes of directions. All the yearning to be free. All I needed was wheels.
Of course, I did part of my driving education by following the rules. I attended driver’s ed, I got my learner’s permit, and I passed my driving test (in New York City driving a 1967 Buick Electra which in areal extent could cover a modest building lot). The first day I had my license I put 150 miles on my car without leaving the borough of Staten Island. Get your motor running, indeed.
From those humble roots my life of road trips grew to the point where I now have headed out on the highway on every continent that has roads.
But recently there’s been a change: Guilt. While I have always owned high-mileage vehicles – and have been very good at exceeding the EPA fuel economy ratings – the pressure of global warming, and my personal contribution to it, has weighed on my soul. There have been a couple of EVs in the mix which were fueled at least partially with sunlight. But, as I’ve aged, I’ve also come to realize that just buying something – with its built-in environmental impact from manufacturing – to save some gas is kind of a waste of money. This is particularly true when that something comes with an environmental break-even point that may be some years after I will be shuffling off this mortal coil.
So, I did what any guilt-ridden, mid-stage geriatric, mild-cognitive decline, early-onset balance loss, road-trippin’ junkie would do.
I bought a scooter.
The details of which were previously reported.
I can hear you thinking: Well, if you already told us this story and you’re telling it again, don’t you think you might want to rethink that “mild-cognitive decline” self-evaluation?
No. Because this post, as it is, contains the rest of the story.
In the last year of the Hiatus, February 2024, to be exact, the thought of a scooter first popped into my mind. They get great fuel economy – on the order of 50km/l (150mpg for those of you who still think in those terms), they’re inexpensive to buy and maintain, and they have a fun factor that can’t be beat. I know, as other old people I know are constantly reminding me, there are some downsides, chief among them being death. But these are the same old people who grew up without seat belts, cramming eight people into a Volkswagen Beetle, riding in the back of pickups, hitchhiking cross-country, being allowed to cross the road without a responsible adult, ride a bicycle without a helmet, eat raw beef, get kisses from the dog and any number of other behaviors that they survived but would now be considered borderline suicidal and justification for expensive, but unneeded, therapy.
How soon they forget.
To test my theory, I flew to Krabi in Thailand’s south, rented a GPX Drone 160 scooter, and spent three weeks wandering the highways and byways of beautiful scenery, great food, and tranquil beaches that make up this part of Thailand.
It was great. But Krabi is not Bangkok and even I believed that some caution was in order.
So, sure, I’d say, it would be great to have a scooter, but I’d only use it for road trips and jaunts up to the hardware store or lunch place. Anything else would be too risky, too hot, too rainy, too blah, blah, blah.
Once I landed in Bangkok last August, I left the airport, headed to the Honda dealer and put in an order for a road-trippable ADV-160. It was red, so it took a while to get here, powerful enough – barely – to take on the hills of a Thai road trip, and just a metric ton-of-fun to ride.
Bangkok, being Bangkok, had other ideas for my scooter and once I got some time and a few thousand kilometers (miles, but faster) under my belt, as it were, dropped the other shoe.
“When are you driving in tomorrow?” We have a place to park so would go to the city together.
“I’ve got to go in early, so I’ll leave about seven.”
“Are you nuts? That’s okay. I’ll just take the scooter.”
My fate was sealed.
When you drive a car in Bangkok traffic it’s like riding a buffalo in a herd of other buffaloes surrounded by swarms of mosquitos. The cars plod along and the scooters zip in and out missing you and each other by mere centimeters as they rush helter-skelter at apparently ill-considered velocities.
But…
When you’re on a scooter the whole script flips. You are moving at the sedate pace of 20km/hour through what appears to be a parking lot where there is plenty of space on all sides of the parked cars. All the other scooters are moving at the same speed, and you all proceed through the parking lot together in a well-choreographed ballet. Slipping between the frozen lines of cars is like the view when Luke was attacking the Death Star at the end of the first movie.
“You’re all clear, kid! Now let’s blow this thing and go home!”
Oh.
My.
God.
This scooter isn’t just fun; it’s complete freedom with two wheels and a monthly stop for gas. No more hour-long trips to go to the doctor six kilometers away. No more worries about when (if?) I’ll arrive at my destination. Rain in the forecast? Maybe for the cars behind me because I’ll already be home when it starts.
So, yeah. My plans changed. I learned something and adapted to it. What I learned was that how I perceive something – like the dangers of riding in Bangkok – is really more about my point of view than what I think I’m looking at if that point of view never changes.
