In one month I am leaving D.C. and, as if the city was helping me prepare for the move, my scooter was stolen this week. I walked outside one morning to find that “Gui” was simply not there. I stood there for a moment, as if his absence was a trick of the eye. However, despite how hard I looked at his typical parking spot, or how many times I blinked, he was gone.

Honestly, I think that Steve was more upset than I was. I promptly filed the event under “what can you do?” and “am I going to be late to work?” I then quickly checked my calendar to see when the day’s meetings were, and then my watch to see if I could catch the work-shuttle from Dupont Circle.

Don’t get me wrong, I was upset, but I didn’t really know what one could do besides twitter regret into the cloud:

Scooter stolen. Le sigh. I suppose it was only a matter of time.

On Facebook, my friend George (who seems to always have the best comments) wrote:

DC’s way of saying good bye

Carly was far more… emotive:

total effing crap. screw that city.

This wasn’t a surprise. I bought the scooter right before grad school, hoping that if I was lucky it would stick around for my two years at Georgetown. With only one month before I leave DC, it has been almost exactly two years.

There is a pattern to scootering that I love: quick accelerations from stop lights, deft weaving down the street, and circumventing much of DC’s obnoxious traffic. A scooter in DC changes your relationship with distance, and as such, the city itself. Loosing Gui has already impacted my relationship with the District, but perhaps is preparing me for the changes about to come. For one, scootering laws in California are very strict, and between a required motorcycle driver’s license, and the fact that my particular model might not even be allowed on California’s streets, I really didn’t know what I was going to do with my scooter when I moved. I figured I would I have to switch over to a bike.

Since the day Gui left I have done just that. I have been riding a wonderful bike I bought from Father Zimmer, a CCT professor who had to sell all of his custom built bikes when he found himself promoted to the Vatican. It is a beautiful cyclo-cross that I had predominatntly used on local bike trails; I have never been able to capture the finess possessed by other urban bikers throughout DC.

I am finding that urban biking has a different pattern than scootering, but one I am thoroughly enjoying. Quick accellerations are replaced with a mild discregard for stop signs; whipping through lanes is replaced by whipping around corners; computing the distance of cars is replaced by constantly recomputing gear settings.

Of course it doesn’t replace the scooter, nor should it, I suppose. Life changes: scooters come and go, as do cities and our times in them. Bicycles, California, and a PhD — just new patterns to enjoy.