Spree and easy

by RAF KATIGBAK

Get ready to sweat, commuters. If you haven’t yet heard, last Sunday afternoon transit maintenance workers gathered for a general assembly and voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike. Sixty seconds after midnight on May 22, 2,142 workers will put down their wrenches and screwdrivers, and walk off the job.

I say get ready to sweat because—whether your mode of transport is public or private—traffic is about to get mad congested, and breaking out into a frantic puddle of perspiration will not be uncommon.

But there is no need to panic; it’s not the end of the world. No need to run around town in loincloths on an apocalyptic killing spree like Sean Connery in Zardoz. By law, the STM must ensure the safety of society at large, so metro and bus lines across Montreal Island will be running to ensure that roads and intersections aren’t so clogged with cars that ambulances, fire trucks and police cars can’t get though in emergencies, and to make sure that medical workers can get to and from their hospital shifts.

In practical terms, that means metro and bus service will run weekdays between 6–9 a.m.; 3:30–6:30 p.m.; and 11 p.m.–1 a.m. and that there will be bus service only on Saturdays and Sundays between 6–9 a.m. and 2 –5 p.m.

Oh and do you know what else? I don’t give a crap. Do you know why? I just got a scooter and it totally rules. That’s right: a scooter. Not just any scooter, but a classic. Okay, so it’s not a classic classic like a Vespa—I couldn’t justify spending more on a scooter than my annual expenditure for rent—it’s a 1984 Honda Spree, possibly one of the best-selling scooters of all time. It’s white, it’s plastic, and it goes 30 km/h.

Growing up in the West Island, having a scooter meant you were cool and increased your chances of getting to third base with a girl by a factor of 12 (as I found out, tooling around the ’burbs in your sister’s lime green banana seat bike had the opposite effect). It was a staple of every pubescent suburban youth with a need for speed and enough savings from their crappy fast food job to afford one. Needless to say, given my lazy nature and my horrendous luck with the opposite sex thanks to an unhealthy obsession with Dungeons and Dragons, I never had one.

Followers of this column may remember last year, when I wrote about the peer pressure of getting a driver’s licence—the bottom line was that I didn’t need one in the city, but it was convenient if I wanted to take off. Well, guess what—it never happened. Perhaps it’s my renegade nature and my refusal to be influenced by outside forces, or the fact that I’m a lazy asshole who couldn’t be bothered with enrolling in driving school.

So it hit me, why not get a scooter? All you need to do is study a short manual, complete a written test, and boom, you’re done. It’s as easy as that “Become a Psychic” Internet course I enrolled in last year that only cost me 10 easy installments of $199 (all I need to do is spend another $300 on their proprietary Quartz Wand of Healing and a Skull Ring of Protection and I’m set).

So here it is, my lily-white Honda Spree. And let me tell you, chicks dig it. Well, if you count girls squealing, “Ooooh, I had the exact one when I was 14!” as “digging it.” Beyond the fact that I am currently living the dream of a 14-year-old suburban girl (now I can’t wait to get my boobs, which will totally make Bobby Shoreditch from homeroom have a crush on me), riding a two-wheeled motorized vehicle actually feels pretty manly. Until people on the street start commenting on how much like a cartoon you look. All I need is an entire South Asian family strapped to this thing in a pyramid formation and it would feel just like home.

As the transit strike looms, I laugh. Because I know that while all those suckers are stuck in traffic, I’ll be cruising, like Peter Fonda in Easy Rider.

Actually, it’ll look more like a cross between Easy Rider and my niece’s Barbie Scooter Adventure colouring book.

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca