Excited and amused, I decide to show it to Justin, for grins and giggles… you know, to keep him up to date on French silliness. The video is totally tacky, it’s a total bling-bling parody. Check it out, it’s pretty funny!

After muscling through it until the end, we were like “who the heck is Helmut Fritz?”. And so we Google around and found this illustrated biography. It’s pretty much a video collage explaining the dude’s life. Really well done, actually. Check it out:

Did you really check it out? No, really, check it out…. especially at 0:39. Anything look familiar? Any flashbacks from October 07?? Who’s riding that Vespa???

It’s me!!! I mean, what are the chances?

They took the picture below, flipped it the other way, outlined the silhouette and pasted Helmut’s face on mine. Unbelievable!!

It doesn’t stop here… I’m also apparently riding across his official website as a clickable icon for more information on a contest that already happened.

Apparently Helmut’s designer views him as riding a Vespa, ok. Sticking a leg out, ok. With striped stockings? Hm, ok. And heels? Uh hmm, ok. With a big pointy orange helmet/hat?? Uh hmm, uhhh, really? I mean if they photoshopped the dude’s face on me, they were probably talented enough to cut off the hat and erase the heel off the boot. But no. Apparently, Helmut is a greedy, cross dressing, annoyed-at-everything, Vespa riding millionaire.
Should I get “credit” for this?

1) They make a nice sidewalk and don’t paint the curb, which means you can park there for an unlimited amount of time.

2) They figure when the heck they’re going to clean the street and puts up a sign. So still able to park there anytime, except when they clean the street.

3) Put parking meter polls one morning.

4) Put the actual meter on the polls the afternoon.

5) Start charging.

Luckily, they didn’t give tickets to the motorcycles and cars that were parked on that block the day they planted the meters. But we’re not always lucky like that. The night before they put the street cleaning sign up, Justin decided to leave his scooter overnight. And guess what? The next morning, the street cleaning sign was up (unannounced), the street got cleaned that morning and a ticket was tucked into his scooter glove compartment.

Anyways, I will look back nostalgically at the times when I could just show up and park for free. Now I have to fit my little blue Vespa hiney in a specially designed motorcycle metered spot and pay $2.50/day. Ok, that’s not a lot, but it’s more than $0. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise and it will motivate me to walk more often. Hmm.

Today, I had to bring in my Vespa LX150 to get a flat tire replaced. That meant dropping off the scooter at the shop and then busing back home. A few hours later, when it was done, I had to bus back down to the shop and scoot home.

Riding the bus made me remember a few things…
* Public transportation really saves on general gas consumption per person, especially when it’s natural gas (which I don’t think was the case today).
* Buses are dirty.
* Buses have a wide variety of human characters, including a woman who sat next to me and had old school headphones on, with techno music blasting through them. So far so good. She slided back the headphone off one ear and started talking. I was thinking hmm, she’s on the phone. But the music was still blasting and although I couldn’t understand what she was saying, she seemed to be repeating the same thing over and over again, with the same laugh at the end. So, after hearing the same foreign phrase about 10-20 times, I understood that nope, she wasn’t on the phone. Just had the same thing to say out loud over and over again and it seemed to be funny.
* It took me 10 minutes to walk to and from my 20 minute bus ride. The walk was nice but the whole trip took forever!!
* Buses smell. I actually hold my breath anytime I see an obviously very dirty person come my way.
* I don’t like riding the bus
* I love my Vespa.

And I’ll say it again: I love my Vespa! The trip home took me 8 awesome minutes instead of 30-40 minutes by bus. I have full control over my route, I feel the air, considering other vehicles I use a limited amount of gas, I feel in touch with the city and its streets, I am in an active mode and I can park it anywhere.

Seriously, once you have one, there’s not way to conceive getting around town without one.

First stop light on Lombard St after crossing the Golden Gate bridge:
– Hey!
– Hey.
– How’s it goin’? (Light turns green)

Second stop light:
– Pretty good, you? (Light turns green)
– (Nod)

Third stop light:
– Good… I’m hungry! Are you hungry?
– Nah, not so much (Light turns green)

Fourth stop light:
– I’m reeeaallly hungry! Wanna stop at Trader Joe’s or something?
– Uh, I don’t know.
– Yeah I guess we don’t really have bags.
– Yeah, I don’t know… I mean we can…. (Light turns green)

Fifth stop light:
– Nah we don’t have to. We can just make some of that Indian lentil stuff we have at home.
– Yeah… (Light turns green)

Sixth stop light:
– Yeah, I was sorta thinking salad would be good.
– Oh, we can do salad. We can stop at Trader Joe’s and get salad. (Light turns green)

Sixth stop light:
– Well, I was thinking Cala*. To just get a bag of lettuce with… (Light turns green)

Seventh stop light:
– With what?
– What?
– Bag of lettuce with what?
– Oh, with ham and almonds with a little balsamic vinaigrette. (Light turns green)

Eighth stop light:
– Ooo that sounds great! Maybe we should pick up some bread too. (Light turns green)

Ninth stop light:
– Sho, that’s cool.
– So, should we make a left on Clay and a right on Hyde? Oh wait, we can just do a left on Bush and up Larkin and a right on California… Yeah, that’s probably too complicated.
– How about we just park the Vespa home and walk to Cala*? (Light turns green)
– (Big nods)

Tenth stop light:
– Ha, yes! Much better plan.
– Okie. (Light turns green and we ride home)

* Crappier grocery store but much closer to where we live.

As you can tell, the only way for us to exchange more than 2 sentences is to be stuck at a stop light. Conversations are very chopped up and sometimes hard to follow, but we somehow manage to make some decisions! And so tonight, we had a lovely, flavor packed salad.

Thank you Red Lights, we couldn’t have done it without you!

Pictures in action to come!

UPDATE: More Pics and a video!!!

MORE UPDATES: The real story unveilled…

As Bri commented, I failed to mention that this was NOT my Vespa, it was Justin’s. Mine is baby blue, and super hot, but not for a witch! However still, I titled the post saying “ride my Vespa”… Well, I suppose that I was such in character and needing so much black that it very much felt like my own for a minute (and it’s the same power, same model (LX150), just slightly newer…essentially the same to ride).

We wanted to dress Justin as a fairy or a princess riding my baby blue Vespa, but never got to making a costume for that. Maybe next year… as I think this one will be my recurring Vespa costume for all eternity. Why? Because I haven’t sewn this much in a verrry long time and I don’t intend to do so in a verrrry long time!

That’s right, to make the helmet wig secure, it took a lot of work. I actually wish I took photos of the step by step process because man, it was a PROCESS!

~ First, I was given a black t-shirt I could just cut and tear. This was for the base of the masterpiece. I put it over the helmet made sure it could go through the visor and under into the inside of the helmet.
~ Then I put the wig over it and stretched it tight. I sewed (by hand!!!) the entire circonference of the tightened wig onto the t-shirt.
~ Then, I took a piece of bright orange felt and figured out how to make a cone,…by trial and error. I secured it with safety pins and sewed the entire circonference of the cone hat and the seem up to its tip.
~Last, I found a jack-o-lantern witch pattern online, which I cut out into black felt and glued it on the side of the hat.
~When I was ready to ride, I left enough fabric to stay inside the helmet, so my head would act as a safety pin, but I also safety pinned it at 6 various spots on the helmet foam.

When you ride with that thing at 55mph, it definitely gives resistance and you don’t want anything to fly away or distract you from the road.
Mission accomplished!