Sunday, February 14, 2010

A Sense of Community

I bought my scooter because it was so much fun. Once I began to make contact with other scooter folks here in Tucson, I discovered something else. People who ride scooter are good people. I like them.
I used to attend a "biker church" in Missouri. (Heart of God Fellowship" in Sibley, MO for those of keeping score.) The biker culture, both good bikers and bad, is one of brotherhood. My biker friends in the church would drop everything to help of their church or biker brothers. I wish I could say the same of other church friends.
The above pic is of Theron Spurgeon. Theron is visiting AZ from Sacramento. He posted on our club website a couple of weeks ago, that he was here and would like to ride with the club. Well, we set up one ride, but his training times were changed and he couldn't make it. Well, this past Friday, he called me, said he was wanting to head in to Tucson and ride. I had him meet me at my house so we could ride. He didn't have a scooter with him, so I offered him the Buddy to ride.
Theron in front of a saguaro cactus.
It occurred to me as we were riding, "Howard, you gave the keys to your scooter to a guy you've on met online. If he were to take off with it, you wouldn't be able to do a thing about it."

Immediately, my counter thought was, "yeah, but he's a scooterist. It's okay." And that is exactly right. On multiple occasions, I've heard members of our club offer one of their scoots to someone they had just met. When my scooter broke down, I made a technical call to Sean and he not only answered my question, but offered to drive 50-60 miles to come fetch me. I ended up having my son come get me, but I am honored by the offer. However, this is just something that one scooterist will do for another..
Theron and I had a great ride. We even had to go around one section of road, because it was flooded with snow melt. That's something that you don't see in Tucson very often. Theron will be heading back home to Sacramento next week. I know now that I have a scooter brother in California and if I'm ever up that way, I know that he or one of his scooter friends would be there to help if I needed it, because that what we, of the scooter community, do.

Ride on,

Howard

1 comment:

  1. Howard:

    You are generally right, but only to the enthusiasts. The others who only care about saving money don't even bother to wave back. I don't know about where you live, but up here, Harley people don't like Cruiser wannabees, Sport bikes don't like scooterists or cruisers. For such a small community, it's so fragmented.
    I have found the Blogging community to be very supportive and to us, it doesn't really matter what you ride except that you ride and enjoy it. Meeting others that share the same interests is just a bonus

    bob
    bobskoot: wet coast scootin

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