Note from the mission historian: The 2023 Scooter Cannonball was an eight-day, 3,170 mile checkpointed ride across the U.S. from San Clemente, California, to Hilton Head, South Carolina. It started June 18th and ended June 25th. Cannonball events are held every two years and are limited to scooters of 278ccs or less.
I piloted “HMS Terror,” #61, a 2016 Vespa 300cc GTS Super Sport(rounded up from its actual 278 by Piaggio marketing). She has about 22 hp and I named her after one of the two ships of the 1839 James Clark Ross Antarctic expedition.
I rode very slowly and carefully and finished almost dead last.
***
HMS Terror on NM 197
Day 03 | Tuesday, June 20: Checkpoint 3 is a lonely three-pump fuel station selling only low 86 octane and diesel on a desolate stretch of New Mexico 197. The temperature hovers in the low 90s as I arrive with Virginia Cherry, a riding partner.
This is the Torreon Store and Gas Station in Cuba, New Mexico, a mandatory checkpoint1 worth 95 points, but we’d be stopping here even if we didn’t have to. The hot, dry air is sucking the life out of us, and despite the cool water in my Camelbak I’m dying for a cold bottle of Gatorade.
We’ve come about 257 miles today and have been hopscotching with fellow Cannonballers Stephen Terrien from New Hampshire and a few others.
That’s not unusual. Motorcyclists and scooterists tend to find their own pace and often encounter those traveling at similar speeds.
Virginia Cherry and Stephen Terrien. With cold drinks, we feel better.
We exchange greetings and commiserate over the heat; it’s good to see them again, to know they’re okay.
We fuel up and do the Cannonball documentation with our smartphones, sending photos and GPS coordinates to event organizers to prove we are here. Then we hit the store for drinks and the restroom, which is unexpectedly elegant in an Algonquin-of-the-West sort of way.
“Steve, visit the restroom even if you don’t have to pee,” I say. “It looks amazing. You’ll thank me later.”
“I will,” Stephen says, and laughs.
Charles Beck fueling up.
Other riders arrive, fuel up and leave, including Charles Beck2 from South Carolina and Steve Putnam3 from Florida. They’re moving fast and steady, riding much more efficiently than me.
Steve Putnam and Virginia.
Then a third rider on a loaded scooter appears at the pumps and we say hello. This is James4 and he does his documentation and wearily takes a seat in the shade of the store.
He’s tired like the rest of us, a little more, maybe.
We strike up a conversation and I ask what drew him to the Cannonball. He tells us he’s doing it for the adventure and has wanted to do it for years.
“I saved up for a long time,” he says after a moment. “I don’t really make much. I’m sort of a janitor at a hospital and I clean up the bloody messes after surgeries and such.
“I was even selling my plasma to get extra money.”
I tell him I admire his dedication and ask if I can take his photo. “I’ll email it to you,” I say.
He laughs through his fatigue and says he’ll show the photo as proof to some people “who didn’t believe I’d be doing this. They thought I’d sell my vacation time and wouldn’t go.”
We wish each another good luck and Virginia and I leave. We have a long way to go.
But I’ll remember James in the miles ahead, marveling at (and envying) his perseverance. The Cannonball is a difficult, expensive, exhausting undertaking, especially for us rookies. I think he’s worked harder than most of us to get here.
The road ahead.
I think of that as the sun bakes us and the taste of cold Gatorade vanishes, and we bounce and rumble down the empty, arid road.
* * *
1 – There are three mandatory checkpoints that riders must document or else lose all points for the day.
2 – Charles, on a 2021 Honda PCX 150, finished 101st overall. 173 riders were at the start; some dropped out along the way for various reasons, including mechanical difficulty.
3 – Steve, on a 2007 Honda Helix, finished 135th overall.
4 – Not his real name and in time you will understand why.
Note from the mission historian: The 2023 Scooter Cannonball was an eight-day, 3,170 mile checkpointed ride across the U.S. from San Clemente, California, to Hilton Head, South Carolina. It started June 18th and ended June 25th. Cannonball events are held every two years and are limited to scooters of 278ccs or less.
I piloted “HMS Terror,” #61, a 2016 Vespa 300cc GTS Super Sport(rounded up from its actual 278 by Piaggio marketing). She has about 22 hp and I named her after one of the two ships of the 1839 James Clark Ross Antarctic expedition.
I rode very slowly and carefully and finished almost dead last.
***
If Virginia conducted riding classes, I would sign up.
Day 04 | Wednesday, June 21: Virginia Cherry and I split up on the unpaved trail leading to Checkpoint 1 this day, mostly because she’s a superbly skilled rider on any road and I’m like skidding across ice with bald tires.
She makes Checkpoint 1 (an abandoned building in Octate, New Mexico) and is urged by a Cannonball support driver to go head without waiting for me, which she does, and later feels bad about.
By the time I get there, she is far ahead of me, which is fine because I go at my own (admittedly slower) pace and wonder about the country I’m passing through. Some of the small towns, once prosperous, are abandoned and desolate. I wonder what happened to them.
Checkpoint 1: Octate, New Mexico.
As expected, it’s another hot day. Checkpoint 2, an abandoned farmhouse on Yates Road, looks haunted1 with its windmill clattering slowly in the breeze.
Probably not haunted, but kinda spooky nonetheless.
I stop for gas at Allsup’s Convenience Store in Clayton, New Mexico, and find fellow riders I know – Bill Redington, Stephen Terrien, and Paul Cronin. It’s really good to see them and we talk about what we’ve seen and laugh together.
Then I hear another scooter arrive and it’s James, the rider from yesterday, catching up with us. He parks at one of the pumps, shuts down, and says hello while pulling off his helmet and jacket. He’s clearly knackered in the heat.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I’m okay. Hot.” He begins fueling up.
I roll Terror from the gas pump to the last parking space in front of the store and go back to talk with the other riders. Paul leaves and Bill is saying something about bad weather when we hear a crash and clatter of metal.
Allsup’s in Clayton, New Mexico.
I turn and see James’s scooter and Terror on their sides on the ground, with James in-between. Someone from the store is already there, trying to help. I dash over.
It looks bad. James appears to be stuck and I can’t tell if he’s hurt. I yell for the others but they’re already on their way.
We lift the scooter off James and the store guy gets the sidestand down. Bill helps James stand up but he’s unsteady and wobbles like he’s going to fall. I grab hold and together we get him upright.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” he says, and staggers toward the store. “I just need something to drink.”
Stephen tries to get James to sit down but he keeps moving. “I think he’s dehydrated,” Stephen says.
I’d question the effectiveness of the artwork, but you get the point.
That’s when the warning about dehydration from fellow rider Eric Semple2 comes soaring into my head. “You have to drink,” Eric had said a day or two earlier. “Dehydration sneaks up on you and you won’t know what hit you.”
Meanwhile, the others have stood Terror upright. I check for damage but I don’t see anything other than a bent eyebolt in the rear luggage plate3. That’s where the scooter hit the Vespa, pushed it off its centerstand, and onto the pavement.
James recovers and says he is sorry about the Vespa. I tell him not to worry. Bill suggests we ride together to the next checkpoint and we agree.
“Why don’t you take point and I’ll bring up the rear?” I suggest to Bill. That means James will have riders in front and behind him.
Rusty grain elevators in Felt, Oklahoma.
That’s how we ride to Checkpoint 3, the last of the day, a group of rusted out grain elevators in Felt, Oklahoma, about 23 miles away. We take our photos and certify our locations and set off again for Guymon, ready to end this day.
But the weather has other ideas.
Storm clouds have been seriously building ahead of us and the wind starts picking up. Rain sprinkles a bit but the gusts are strong enough to batter us on the road. I’ve ridden in bad wind before but this is starting to get scary.
The storm in the distance.
Bill pulls over and we all stop.
“This is looking bad,” he says. “You can go ahead if you want, but I’m going to turn around and wait this out back there.”
It’s a sensible idea – I’m secretly relieved – so we follow him back to the rusted sheet metal silos of Checkpoint 3. If we need a support truck, they’ll know exactly where we are, which is about 60 miles from Guymon.
The wind threatened to knock over the scooters.
We park our scooters on the side of the road and wait for more than an hour, as Bill monitors the storm’s movements by smartphone with the help of his brother back East.
At times the wind is strong enough to rock the scooters, so much that we sit on or keep a hand on them to prevent a tip-over.
We waited out the storm.
Finally the storm clears and we proceed. It’s dark by the time we get to Guymon but we are too tired to care, I think. Everyone is all right: Bill, Stephen, James, myself, and a rider named Eddie who joined our group to wait.
Later, we learn that some riders were pummeled by rain and hail.
As the storm clears, Eddie and Bill prepare to leave.
Next morning, Day 05, I take my spare Camelbak4, a new one with the tags still on it, and find James packing his scooter in the Hampton’s parking lot.
“Here,” I say, “This is an extra. Why don’t you take it? It may make the ride easier.”
He looks at it, then at me. “No, thank you,” he says. “I’m dropping out.”
I’m stunned. “Seriously?”
“I’m tired and I’m packing it in,” he says. “I’m just getting rid of a bunch of stuff and going home.”
“Wait a sec,” I say. “We’re halfway done.”
It’s true. We’ve covered about 1,500 miles with roughly 1,670 to go.
“You’ve done a lot to get this far – not many people can say that. You can keep going,” I say.
“No,” he says. “I’m going home.” Then he pauses and says, “This isn’t the first time. It’s happened before. There’ve been other instances.” And there’s a ship-lost-at-sea look of resignation in his eyes that breaks my heart.
He continues strapping bags to the scooter. And I try to find the words that will make him see otherwise and I fail, miserably. I know the Cannonball is not an easy ride; I’ve thought about quitting, myself. The heat and fatigue and effort are exhausting.
“Take the Camelbak anyway,” I say. “For the ride home.”
He shakes his head, says, “no, thank you” and turns away with finality and I realize that there is nothing I can do without making him resent me for interfering. And I am so damned inadequate and sorry.
Virginia will tell me that she also tried to talk to him and he rather snapped and said Look, I’m going home, okay?
I see Stephen a bit later and relate what happened. “That’s unfortunate and I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “But it’s his decision to make. It’s up to him.” And Stephen is right, of course.
“A single righteous act can tip the balance and make all the difference.”
Day 04 was a long day but we’d dealt with it, the heat, scooters falling over, and dodging a storm.
And now I learn again that sometimes, despite our best effort and intention, nothing can be done.
Even so, I wish that we – James and me – had been able to tip the balance on that morning of Day 05.
***
1 – Which makes me compose a ghost story in my helmet about a motorcycle rider who pauses in front of a farmhouse to take a picture and talks with a little girl who invites him in for a cup of cold water. He politely declines and later learns that the house has sat empty for years.
2 – That’s VespaChef #8, a superb rider, chef, outdoorsman and raconteur. A true Renaissance Man, one might say.
3 – I wonder if the Vespa’s headset’s been knocked out of alignment and check that, too, but it looks okay. Moto Richmond later assures me it’s good.
4 – Linda suggested I try one during the hellishly hot ride home from San Diego in 2007 and I’ve been using it on every long ride since. They really do help. Some riders use water bottles mounted on the bike instead of backpacks, but the result is the same.
While checking over Terror1, the 2016 Vespa I recently bought from a nearby Vespa dealer2 to use in the 2023 Scooter Cannonball, I discovered they’d drastically over-filled the engine oil.
The oil on the dipstick was way above the MAX mark – which is not good, of course, since too much oil means too much pressure inside the engine, causing leaks and other damage.
I put about 8 miles on Terror just riding it home, which shouldn’t present a problem.
The discovery sent me scurrying to the Vespa manual.
The dealer said they’d changed the engine oil and transmission oil before selling it. I asked about brake fluid, since it’s hygroscopic and absorbs water over time.
You really don’t want that. Water in brake fluid compromises braking and causes rust in steel brake lines and elsewhere in the system.
They said they didn’t know when it was last changed but said their mechanic “looked at” the brake fluid, presumably in the reservoir, and said it was okay.
Apologies, but that’s bullshit, too. You need to test the fluid with special test strips or an electronic meter – you can’t just “look” at it. Everything I’ve ever read says you should change the fluid every two years or so.
This 2016 Vespa is six years old.
Terror, with proper oil level, shortly before departure for Richmond.
But back to the engine oil. On Friday night, after sticking a clean plastic straw down the filler hole, I laboriously and patiently and carefully sucked out the excess oil like it was a toxic milkshake.
Motul 4T 5W-40 full synthetic looks like red wine salad dressing but most certainly does not taste like it.
I got the engine oil level down to where it should be. The excess went into a gallon jug that formerly held Arizona iced tea. It was about ¾ inch deep, which seems a frightful amount.
Moto Richmond’s new digs, at 6000 Midlothian Turnpike. A nice upgrade for them.
On Saturday, I rode the Vespa 153 miles south to Scoot Richmond3. They’ll change the brake fluid and engine coolant, to give me a baseline of maintenance. Linda and I will pick it up on Saturday, Aug. 6.
And that was the latest Vespa adventure, with the apparent lesson being you have to check everything.
Linda and I had lunch at the Riverside Tavern in Richmond. It was pretty good, you should try them.
_ _ _
1 — Which is named after the second ship of the James Clark Ross expedition to the Antarctic in 1839. We’ve been over this before, right?
2 — Who shall remain anonymous. The sales person was very nice, though.
3 — Who has the only Vespa mechanics I can trust, apparently. It doubles my regret at not waiting and purchasing a similar vintage Vespa that popped up on their site after I bought Terror.
Former faux motto of the Daily Kent Stater, the student newspaper at Kent State University
Erebus (No. 6) and Terror.
Sometimes it’s hard to justify an act of commerce, even with motorcycles, but I bought a used 2016 Vespa 300cc Super Sport to pilot in the Scooter Cannonball.
The idea of doing the 2023 Cannonball – an 8-day coast-to-coast rally limited to scooters of 300ccs or less – started germinating like Japanese knotweed in the back of my mind after I wrote about it for USA Today last year.
It’s one of my favorite stories and I think that’s because I had a great time talking to the riders I interviewed. Fascinating people, every one.
So now I have two Vespas.
Map of the 2023 Scooter Cannonball in the hallway of Starbase 8.
There’s an indescribable feeling you get when crossing the dividing line between spectator and participant. I felt it most keenly in my first Marine Corps Marathon, taking my place among the other runners and thinking to myself I’m really doing this at last.
Likewise, writing about the Cannonball made me think could I do this?
The marathon had its roots in my high school cross-country days, back in the Pleistocene era1. The Cannonball dream is more recent, of course, and I’m learning more about its logistical demands, which are roughly akin to those of the Normandy invasion.
The colors are close but not exact; Terror is “grigio” which is “gray” in Italian, and Erebus is “Sei Giorni Grey,” which has some blue mixed in. Go figure.
The planning elements comprise a long list2, but choice of scooter – what am I going to ride? – is probably paramount.
Scooters get punished during the Cannonball. Small engines aren’t intended for sustained high-speed travel over 8 to 10 days and riders often do maintenance chores in hotel parking lots when they’d much rather be sleeping in their rooms 10 feet away.
A 22 hp Vespa is considered “super,” in case you were wondering.
I could take Erebus, my 2020 Vespa Sei Giorni, but it’s sort of a special-edition model and I started having visions of being dopey-tired and dropping it at gas stations and such. I really didn’t want to bash her up3.
That made me think about getting a second scooter, one, er, nice but not as nice as Erebus but still sturdy enough to get me across the country. Linda and I looked at Japanese scooters4 but then I saw the 2016 on La Moto Washington’s website.
Terror will get a new windscreen and rack, similar to the one on Erebus.
It’s a 2016 Vespa Super Sport, a 300cc scooter with ABS, much like Erebus but less sporty-appearing. The engine isn’t an HPE like Erebus and Linda’s GTS but it’s still powerful, relatively speaking5, and has longer maintenance intervals. It had 872 miles on the odometer.
Long story short, I rode it home eight miles in the rain today.
I had to give her a name and, continuing my preference for naming my motorcycles after Antarctic exploration ships6, chose the moniker Terror, after the second ship of the James Clark Ross expedition of 1839-1843. Erebus was the first7.
The glovebox, which is too small to hold gloves.
Terror is in my workshop now at Starbase 8 with 880 miles on the clock. I’ll start learning how to work on it, how to change engine oil and filters and how to replace transmission belts and variator and clutch rollers. It will be a steep learning curve for me.
I’ll baby Terror and take care of her, but I’ll be secure knowing that I can take a tumble and – while aghast at the damage I’m causing8 – think: At least I’m not fucking up Erebus.
_ _ _
1 – Admittedly, I wasn’t a very good runner, then or now. I’ve had bystanders tell me to just get a cab.
2 – That’s not an exaggeration. You have to decide if/how to ship your scooter to the starting line, reserve rooms at hotels/motels along the way, arrange for space on support vehicles and figure out how you’re going to get your scooter home when the rally is over.
3 – Any motorcycle or scooter can get damaged while traveling but the Cannonball carries a higher risk because of long days, insufficient sleep, enforced timelines and intense navigation. I just didn’t want to risk Erebus like that.
4 – A Honda ADV 150 or Yamaha SMAX were on the list. They have smaller engines and less power than Terror but are considered extremely reliable.
5 – Terror has 22 hp; Erebus has 24.
6 – It’s true; I have three motorcycles and two Vespas of my own (not counting Linda’s Vespa and Yamaha Vino) and all but one has an Antarctic-related name.
The outlier is Santiago, the 1965 Honda CL-77 awaiting restoration in a shed out back. It’s named after one of the five ships Magellan took on his circumnavigation voyage in 1519.
7 – Both were constructed as “bomb ships,” built with extremely strong hulls to withstand the impacts of naval explosions. Sadly, they were lost during the 1845 Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage in the Arctic. Erebus was found in 2014; Terror was discovered in 2016.
8 – And will fix, since it’s a really nice scooter.
I signed up for the 2023 Scooter Cannonball1 – a scooter-only, 8-day event covering 3,170 miles – on June 25, the day registration opened, and the same day I tried to fire up Linda’s Vespa 300 GTS and found it wouldn’t start.
It was irony of the highest sort, since the Cannonball is a long-distance event in which participants ride scooters of 300ccs (or less) across the country. Scooters aren’t really meant for that type of distance and riders typically do scooter maintenance in hotel parking lots at night.
My rider name – pronounced “Yer-ko,” thank you – and number.
So the work of getting her Vespa back online became a learning experience, a dry run of sorts for the Cannonball, since breakdowns are common during the event. Riders are expected to at least attempt to make their own repairs, though fellow competitors often offer help2.
The Vespa hadn’t been run in a while. I pulled the Dow cover, rolled it from underneath the patio overhang and turned the key.
Creating the usual mess…
The system initialized: the dash lights came on, the fuel pump pumped, but when I hit the starter button, I was rewarded with only a single click from somewhere in the engine.
One tries to be rational and methodical in times like these but I couldn’t help but think: “What if this were happening at a hotel in Guymon, Oklahoma, in the morning?3 What would I do?”
I charged up the battery, tried the starter again without success, and found the battery level had fallen again. From experience with Endurance’s battery, I figured that was the problem.
Inside the workshop for the new wire connection.
We dashed to La Moto Washington before they closed and got a new battery, which didn’t solve the problem. So I was feeling rather clueless.
I started searching online for solutions and to watch Robot’s instructional videos on scooterwest.com5. I traced the clicking to the starter relay under the saddle and checked it by swapping out the relay from Erebus, which has the same engine as Linda’s Vespa.
Erebus fired up, but the other Vespa didn’t. So it wasn’t the starter relay.
A ring terminal, like this.
I started poking about the engine, looking to check the spark plug and spied a rubber sparkplug-like boot and pried it off, only to see a stud, a nut and the business end of a broken ring terminal, a dime-sized fitting used here to connect a wire to the engine block. Could this be it?
I modified a ring terminal from a box of spare parts, fitted it on the engine, and tried the starter button. The Vespa cranked over and started.
I don’t know what I felt more: relief or amazement at discovering the problem. I have to permanently mount a ring terminal to the engine wire, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem. And now we even have a spare battery.
Down there.
____
1 – I wrote about the Cannonball in 2021 for USA Today online4. It’s one of my favorite stories; I enjoyed talking with nearly a dozen riders, a good group of folks. After some internal deliberation, I decided to sign up myself, though I have a long way to go before I’m actually ready.
2 – It’s part of the camaraderie of the event. Seriously, it’s a wonderful thing to see.
Motorcycle Days 