Playing House: Scooting Around Key West

We had an absolutely lovely vacation in Key West. It was everything we wanted it to be - relaxing, fun, low-key, just wonderful. The weather was great. Let me rephrase that - the weather was humid. Holy greasy face, flat hair it was humid. But we just had the best time together. I've included a few obligatory vacay photos below, but what I really want to tell you about is our last day in Key West.

So, let me first explain that many people travel around the island on little mopeds and these golf cart looking vehicles. We spent all our days in Key West by the pool/beach or eating at great restaurants and just taking it easy. We are not the most adventurous people, nor do we claim to be, but we thought it was high-time we did something... well, just something. So, we decided to rent a moped for two so we could go explore the island.

A couple of things, ummm, turns out mopeds are much more difficult to operate than one would think. I honestly thought it'd have an on/off switch. No. I'm pretty sure it was at least a 3-step process to turn the freakin' thing on. I could tell the hubby was concentrating very hard on the directions, but judging by the look on moped man's face, I could tell he thought Greg didn't stand a chance. I totally felt the urge to walk up to him all "unh-UNH" (snaps fingers in Z formation), but I just stood quietly watching the scene unfold.

So, the guy suggested Greg take it for a spin around the block. Then, pick me up and go for another spin around the block just to get used to it before we take it on the open road. And then things started to fall apart. He took off around the corner, but it looked to be rather jerky, so I was a little nervous. After what felt like an eternity (about 2 1/2 minutes), he swung back by to get me.

Nervously, I hopped on and off we went. Actually it was more like... and off - wait no... offff - eff, how do you get this thing going... and OFF we went. For a minute, I thought we looked pretty cute, but in hindsight, I'm pretty sure it was more like this:

I caught the looks on several people as we ~~sped~~ ~~skidded~~ rode jerkily by; the faces were mixed with disgust and pity. (For clarification: this is the same look that one would receive if one were to pull into the parking garage at work, roll down their window to badge in, only to realize that John Mayer's "Your Body is a Wonderland" is blaring. Buh-laring. I mean, not that I would know or anything.)

After one short trip around the block and a slow-motion vision of us flying off and eating pavement, I suggested we cut our losses. So, heads hanging low, we walked back up to the shop owner. We got our refund minus a $10 "contract fee" or what I'm guessing is more like a $10 "you should feel ashamed of yourself so we're keeping $10 to rub it in" fee. We left the shop, minus $10, minus any adventure and certainly minus our pride. To make it worse, I'm pretty sure we saw about 20 different people on mopeds in the next 10 minutes just cruising by. I would swear we saw both a 14-year-old girl and 90-year-old grandma riding them, too, for good measure.

Oh well, back to the pool it was.