Discussing the Weather

I got extremely wet coming to work today. There's a lot to be said for a scooter as a form of transport in a large city, but protection from the elements isn't one of them.

We're talking scooters as in small mopeds with footwells, of course, not those ludicrous skateboards-with-a-steering-column which were popular three years ago. Since those were the apex of human technological achievement, not to mention cool, they transcended this plane and become gadgets of pure thought, which is why you never see them around any more. My scooter is still very much a material object: it eats petrol, needs its tires filled and refuses to start on cold mornings.

It also looks silly and evinces contempt from car-drivers, proper motorcyclists and even pedestrians, but I don't care. I can steer carefully around stationary columns of traffic, dive down cycle lanes when counting as a motor vehicle becomes inconvenient, and keep my means of transport indoors overnight. OK, pedestrians could say the same, but the scooter also moves at up to 30 miles an hour, which few pedestrians can manage.

It also gets me bloody wet, and sometimes very cold as well. It can't be used when the roads are icy, which is a disadvantage it has over feet. Visibility sometimes becomes problematic, as well. I can't keep my crash helmet's visor down while driving, because it steams up as soon as I exhale, and I have a 25-minute journey to work. A champion Greek pearl diver might possibly be able to work with that, but not I. However, keeping the visor up means that my glasses become susceptible to the weather. Yesterday there was freezing fog, which I was convinced became very much worse during my journey. When I arrived, and removed my glasses to take my helmet off, I found I could see much better without them thanks to the ice crystals encrusting the lenses.

Wind is the worst thing, though -- great gusts of it making me steer into walls, lorries, ravines etc. (Strictly speaking there are no ravines in Bristol, no, but there are some nasty dips in the road.) And the sun, getting in my eyes and blinding me for entire stretches of straight road. Bastard.