Why? (Tim)

Scott and I met a number of years ago at a conference.  We were both volunteering our services.  I was doing some teaching, and Scott was running the logistics for the conference.  We are like that; we are 'giving' sorts of people.  The fact that the conference is run on the sea front of a chic little town on the Italian riviera had nothing to do with our enthusiasm to support such a worthy conference.
Crea Conference (www.creaconference.com) is now in its 9th year and we of course plan to offer our services once again this year - its a tough job, but someone has to do it!
In past years, we have normally traveled to Sestri Levanti by some combination of flights, trains, hire cars and taxis.  And we would have done the same this year if it werent for the fact that we've both recently become enthusiastic owners of Vespa scooters - and shared the dream of riding them through Tuscan hills and along Mediterranean sea fronts.

The recent addition of scooters to our lives is all a bit of an accident and surprise to both of us.  Mine arrived nearly a year ago when a friend of my daughter was under pressure to get rid of his MOT failure PX125 from his dads garage where it had been gathering dust for the past 2 years.  I'd never ridden a motorcycle in my life, but rather fancied the idea of trying to get it started - just for fun.  As it turned out, it was much more of a project than I'd anticipated and the subsequent 8 months saw me completely strip and rebuild the whole vehicle - During which I blogged about the process and my growing love for Vespas ( you can read the whole story at www.blackspanner.blogspot.com)
Meanwhile Scotty and I were doing various bits of work together and I was regularly chewing his ear off in the bar in the evenings over a JD and coke or two about how fabulous I thought Vespas were...... and it wasnt long before he was agreeing with me.... and soon thereafter, looking to buy one.

2 weeks ago, Scotty, a scooter virgin, bought his Vespa PX125 - and so it was clearly a natural next step for us to think about taking the Vespas on a 1600 mile round trip through France and Italy.  Why wouldn't you do that to test a pair of old, unknown entities (bikes and riders)?

With barely 200 miles of scooter experience between us (I did do a 110 mile / 5 hour trip to my mums last weekend) we have somehow egged each other on to agree to make this epic journey.