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Byline: Natalie Neff
I SCOOTERED HOME THE OTHER day, ferrying our resident Piaggio to the shelter of my garage for winter storage, squeezing it in between a long-unused washing machine and my already parked Ducati. The mercury barely touched the 50-degree mark, and it felt half that at speed, even bundled in my shaggy winter coat, with thick fleece gloves and scarf tied tightly.
The roads leading out of the city don't offer much in the way of inspiration, either, including the same route used by garbage trucks wending their way to the incinerator, leaving the Piaggio and me to draft in the plumes of rankness billowing in their wakes, with me squinting in my open-face helmet against the dust and gravel and, sometimes, spray and trying not to breathe.
With a hard squeeze on the throttle, the Piaggio squirted through a gap between the trucks, and soon we were flying through the desolate heart of a postindustrial Detroit desert, past shuttered factories tagged too many times by disaffected youth, dodging the shiny ...