Took the scooter out for my first solo spin today. It's been parked at work since I bought it—I was planning to practice on it last weekend, but the first big storm of the winter pre-empted my plans. Plus I had to get the all-important helmet. But it's registered now, I have the helmet, and it looked like rain, so I hustled over to the office to try beating the storm.

The big practice item for the day was starting it up and getting into first gear without stalling; my 1/2 hour of practice before buying got stuck on that point time and again, and really, everything is pretty moot until you get that part down. Surprisingly, I did it on the first try, and was able to scoot around at low speed through a few turns before I hit a stop sign and came to a lurching halt. After a frustrating few minutes of being a bit overeager on the clutch, I finally got it going again, and after that it was pretty smooth sailing—I did a bunch of laps around the lot, and finally got up enough nerve to take it out onto the street.

One thing I should have remembered from bicycing— without the protection of a metal shell around you, you really feel the mph, which for me is both a total rush and quite scary at first. I got the scooter up to about 30, but wanted to stay off of occupied streets and turned back into the parking lot when I hit the first light. I have a feeling I'm gonna be a grandma on this thing for a long while, and that's OK. I'm more convinced than ever that taking the motorcycle training class is a good idea, although I got turning down pretty well. A good day, and if the weather holds I might try to bring her home tomorrow…