A Muse and a Mid-Life Crisis

It's been several years since our scooter-muse first zipped up into our driveway, and it wasn't really too long after that day that my husband began to ponder the idea of scooting around on two wheels ourselves. Jenn lived a few doors down from us, and nearly every day we would see her scooting by our house on her way here and there, sometimes blowing her horn and waving. Other times she would scoot into the driveway and stop for a chat. All the while an idea was forming in the back of my husband's mind, an idea that would change our lives quite a bit later on.

The McNews and our Scooter Muse-Jenn!

Out of the blue one day Bill told me that since we were getting close to mid-life crisis age we ought to buy scooters and have a mid-life crisis together. After I finished laughing hysterically at him I realized he was not joking. He had already been on the internet pricing them out and felt we could pick a couple of scooters up fairly cheap. Fifty CC scooters didn't require a motorcycle endorsement so we could ride those initially, and if we liked it we could move on to something larger after we got our endorsements. I even surprised myself when I realized I was game.


 Fast forward a few weeks and we had Tweety Bird, a neon yellow Chinese scooter, 150cc, and a red 50cc TaoTao. After getting our motorcycle endorsements we began to ride. And we really LIKED it!

I only have this pic, no Tweety pics.

As a matter of fact, we liked riding so much we began to look at upgrading to faster, more durable scoots. Bill did his research and felt Vespas were the way to go.We saved and searched for the best deals. Actually Bill did because he became a man obsessed! We got rid of the red 50cc and bought Bill's Vespa first, a beautiful chocolate brown  GTV 300. Mine was acquired shortly after, a gorgeous candy apple red Vespa GTS 300. At this point, the fun REALLY began! And we sold Tweety to a young man who really needed transportation. Win/Win!

Beautiful day to ride at the St. Andrews Marina!

We rode our scoots everywhere! First on back roads only and for the most part we avoid busy main roads even today.  The ride is always better if it's slow enough to take in smells, sights and sounds anyway, and on busy roads it's hard to do that. The level of alertness you have to maintain on busy roads is tiring as well. We were always driving on guard and defensively. In spite of that I had an "incident" involving only myself that shook us both up pretty good and almost ended my scooting for good.

But that's another blog.

Which I will be writing soon so make sure you subscribe to this blog for future posts and check out Panama City Scoots on Facebook and Instagram!


Til next time-safe scooting!

Robin