Barely managed to avoid a great temptation

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my trip to Denver but I didn’t talk about the great temptation.

No, it wasn’t the wonderful ice cream I fetched for my wife and I one night but it did occur on that excursion.

Downtown those Lime scooters (Lime being the company brand) were everywhere. Young people were weaving in and out of sidewalk traffic and weaving in and out of vehicle traffic and basically causing old folks like myself to fret over being run down by one of the green two-wheelers.

I might have been a little worried about some kid mowing me down but I also was pretty jealous seeing them ripping down the sidewalks. I could see myself balanced on one of them making good time.

Apparently you download the Lime app and it locates a scooter nearby. Then you scan a QR code to unlock it and take off. When you’re done you re-lock it with the app and it charges your credit card a buck plus so much per minute aboard.

As I left the hotel to go get the ice cream a few blocks away, there was one of those scooters parked at the street signal in front of the hotel.

I swear the thing called my name.

“Karl, climb aboard, have some fun, show folks how young and hip you are to all things citified.”

It’s true I looked longingly at it as I waited for the light to change. But the angel on my other shoulder urged me to keep both feet firmly planted on the ground. The devil on my other shoulder whispered in my other ear halfway across and I stopped to listen.

“You’re not that old, your bones aren’t that brittle, besides you practically lived on a bicycle growing up. Two wheels on a scooter couldn’t be any different.”

I will tell you that I never owned a scooter, motorized or otherwise. Dirt roads weren’t compatible with those little wheels and by the time we moved to town where there were sidewalks I didn’t have a desire for a scooter.

It was the same way with roller skates — no place much in the country to skate but we got skates for Christmas anyway. We skated round and round inside a small two car detached garage then later got better at the roller rink.

I thought I was a pretty good roller skater and years later I decided that skill would transfer to ice skates. Man, was I ever wrong about that assumption.

I think it was the vision of crawling off that ice rink that saved me from getting on that scooter that night. My wife thanked me for the ice cream and for not breaking my leg on a scooter.

I would still like to try one of those things out, but downtown Denver when my wife was counting on me to help get her home probably wasn’t the best place to try. If you have one I could borrow let me know.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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