Zen and the Art of Motorcycle License Obtaining

This weekend, I completed the Motorcycle Ohio safety course in order to be officially licensed to drive a motorcycle.  I own a 2008 Buddy scooter and needed to take the course to legally be able to ride.  Now that I am legal, I can ride with my son on the back and/or ride at night and/or ride on the interstate.  Um, yeah that last one is not happening.  It is an exciting thing to be part of a bad-ass club like this, even if my ride is pink and only has a 125cc engine.

For the past six years, I have wanted a scooter. The first Vespa I ever saw up close was in a vendor’s tent at the X-Games in Philadelphia. I was eight months pregnant when I sat down on a scooter seat for the first time, and I fell in love. I asked the guy with the name tag, “Do these things come with child seats?” He laughed, but I was serious. I wanted that baby blue scooter so badly, but knew I’d have to wait, at least until the baby was born.  Well, I waited and waited and waited. In the mean time, my husband and I had the baby, moved to Cleveland, bought a house, bought a truck, got real jobs, and lived our lives.  Still, I never really let the scooter thing go.  As every birthday and Christmas approached, I’d remind everyone that all I really wanted was a scooter.  My husband would continually make excuses as to why I couldn’t get one, most of which were quite valid. “We don’t have the money.”  “It’s not practical for a woman with a toddler.”  “We live in Cleveland, how many sunny days are there really going to be?”  But I persevered, and still talked to anyone who would listen about my future pink scooter with a Hello Kitty helmet.

Then something magical happened; all the pieces fell into place.  My husband got a new job and a nice raise.  We made our final car payment.  My son was old enough that he could really ride on the back. Gas prices hit nearly $4/gallon.  Suddenly there was no more waiting, and I was at the scooter store, talking about Vespas versus Stellas versus Buddies. I was getting a scooter, and I wasn’t taking “no” for an answer.

“Can I take it for a test drive?” I asked the very nice man at Pride of Cleveland Scooters that let my kid play on all the bikes in the show room.

“Sure, I just need to see your license. You have a motorcycle endorsement, right?”

Um, no.

You don’t know me at all if you think that stopped me.  I paused, yes, but did not stop.  I went ahead and got my temps, scheduled my Motorcycle Ohio class, arranged for my dad to test drive scooters for me and bought my scooter all within two months of that day. I knew what I wanted, I just needed Dad to confirm that it was the right choice.

So there I was this weekend, taking the motorcycle course with Harley Davidson owners, biker chicks, men who had been arrested for driving without a motorcycle license, and fathers and sons who raced dirt bikes.  I was a little nervous that I would be treated as an impostor or mocked for being a girlie girl.  Beautifully it was totally the opposite.  All 12 people in my class and the two instructors were great and were definitely pulling for me to not only pass the class but to really learn to ride.  I was even the only one in the class lucky enough to have received a nickname: “Scooter”.  In the mornings the class gathered around Eloise (that’s my scooter’s name) and smoked cigarettes, drank coffee and asked me about my mpg, my horsepower, my trunk, my gas tank.  I was even asked out on a date by one of them. 

After two days of six consecutive hours on a Honda Rebel, my left hand hurts from pulling in the clutch so much, my inner thighs ache from straddling the motorcycle for hours on end, my right wrist hurts from playing with the throttle, and my nose and neck are sunburned.  But my pride is fine and dandy because I can ride with the best of ‘em.  Mount up, let’s ride!