March 29th, 2010 Vespaddicts

Rain, Wind and cool temperatures are keeping the twin Vespa's inside for the day. This is a great time to introduce you to us and our Vespas. I'm Lyne and am a middle aged, somewhat anti social Vespa rider. I am married to Mike, a larger than life, optimistic bordering on hyper happy guy who also rides a Vespa. We've been married almost 30 years and have come to a place in life where we yearn for relaxation, comfortable adventure and warm climates.

We live in Northeast Washington State, where it's not warm in the winter, cool in autumn, and rainy in the spring. We have about 4 months of sunshine, give or take. We like to make the most of the sun and spend our days riding (previously owned a Honda Metropolitan 50 and a Piaggio Typhoon 50) floating Spokane's famous river, camping and bbq'ing. We rode our 50's for the past 3 years and enjoyed them so much. Why did we get Vespa's? We bought them so we could broaden the adventure. 49cc's on city roads are great; however, if you want to ride backroads, smaller highways and secondary roads 49cc's is much too small.

My mother said "well just pull over for traffic". She's trying to kill me. Pulling over on many of our roads lands you in gravel, ditches and unsafe shoulder areas. Her thought is they are small therefore they are safer. Not so ma! The Vespa's will afford us a way to get out of the way of people in cars who apparently got their license either from Cap'n Crunch or hefty bribes from the DMV officer and that is assuming they have a license. People don't see 2 wheelers. They can be looking right at you and see right through you. After tax time we had dug out of a great amount of cc debt and thought no better time.

We purchased a Vespa 150 S from the local dealer for me and a ( with minimal scratches, salvaged title) 250 GT for Mike. Yes, I know a salvaged title...but dang the bike was about $2500 cheaper and had just 600 miles. We were lucky on his bike. The bike not only checked out fine but was inspected and passed. Had we to do it over again we would probably wait for the right deal second hand rather than salvage. But as you will see the salvage title has made for great conversation at my expense and to Mike's delight.