Agony and uncertainty, a lot of the time. For example, the other day we watched a young boy trying to impress a member of the opposite sex. He was a local lad while she was a visiting foreigner, a German, seated outside a café with the rest of the family. He began by pausing briefly near her table on his motorbike. She ignored him, so he then tried zooming past at speed. At his first pass she looked up with a flicker of interest, so he skidded around and zoomed back the other way. At the third pass she smiled and tentatively waved a hand. He was doing well!
After a few minutes of this, with things progressing nicely, the girl’s family decided enough was enough and grandad took her off for a walk around the plaza. She was around three years old, her suitor something similar, and his motorbike was one of those plastic things you sit astride while crouching low in the proper motormaniac way. He had to propel it with his feet but could do a convincing turn of speed and authentic skid-turns on his wide plastic tyres.
But now he had to watch as his potential conquest disappeared, although she did look back a little wistfully as she went. He was left there with nothing to do, feeling a bit silly. He dismounted from his motorbike, flipped it upside down and banged the underneath of it with his fist.
‘Problems with the engine?’ I suggested.
‘No.’ He banged it again just to be sure, flipped it the right way up and zoomed off somewhere else, confidence renewed.
If only it were always that easy. Soon he’ll have a real bike and more complex relationships to deal with. Perhaps his next step in that direction will be a patinete, the old-fashioned foot-propelled scooter that has staged a revival in recent years. Most of the local kids have one, sometimes the modern three-wheeled variant where you perch on a V-shaped frame and waggle your legs from side to side to keep it moving. A skilled rider can go almost as fast as the three-year old on his motorbike. Terrific exercise for kids, but I doubt if I could manage more than a couple of waggles before putting my back out.Not so good healthwise are the two-wheeled, self-balancing hoverboards you stand on to be effortlessly transported by electric traction. These landed on San Sebastián’s main plaza a couple of years ago as catastrophically as a Dalek invasion, the first big wave being on the sixth of January after the annual visit by the Three Kings who do the job of Father Christmas here. Fortunately the invaders seem to have succumbed to some fatal disease - always a risk for aliens (see The war of the worlds by HG Wells) - because there are very few of them still around.
Or perhaps it’s not so fortunate because they seem to be reincarnated as electric scooters. This is potentially an even more serious threat because they appeal to adults at least as much as children. On my cycle route home I’m now regularly overtaken by an e-scooter whooshing silently by, its rider poised as upright and elegant as an emperor on a chariot.
They’re surprisingly capable, these things. One of the cruise ships that calls into San Sebastián offers its passengers guided tours into the hills on electric bicycles, but another has recently started doing the same thing with electric scooters. They set off from the port in a long line, all wearing helmets but otherwise a motley collection of riders from teenagers to old men with beards. Hands grasping their narrow handlebars, they glide silently through the streets in military convoy and out into the hills like some weird beings from an old surrealist movie or an early Doctor Who.
An admission: I’d quite like an e-scooter.
I don’t need it and couldn’t justify it but they do look like fun. Although not, I would think, something to go for if you’re trying to impress the girls because any skid-turn or other masterly flourish is likely to send rider and scooter spinning in opposite directions. Perhaps I won’t bother.
NOTES
for the serious student
We’ve seen an increasing variety of e-transport in San Sebastián in recent years including adult versions of the two-wheeled hoverboard and even the futuristic single-wheeled e-wheel. It’s just a wheel.But it’s the electric scooters that have really blossomed - and with them, the number of complaints from pedestrians. The Ayuntamiento, the town council, recently issued a reminder about correct behaviour. You mustn’t go faster than 10 kilometres an hour (about 6mph) on a pavement and you must keep at least 1 metre away from pedestrians or the facades of buildings. You must not perform any manoeuvre that might put pedestrians at risk (such as, I suppose, attempting skid-turns, jump-turns or wheelies). If in doubt, the correct way to get around with an e-scooter is to carry it. Umm… doesn’t that rather… well, okay. Pedestrian safety comes first.
These excellent guidelines are likely to prove only temporary because in mainland Spain there have been a lot of accidents involving e-scooters - some 300 in 2018 - and new regulations will soon come into force throughout the country, including here. You will no longer be able to ride your e-scooter at all on a public pavement. All such ‘personal mobility’ devices will be considered vehicles, just like cars and motorbikes. On roads the maximum speed will be 25 kilometres an hour and you could be fined if caught riding while using a mobile phone.
This all sounds very sensible and reasonable. Rather more so than the British approach which currently bans you from riding your e-scooter on public roads as well as pavements, limiting you to pootling around on your private airfield or country estate.
