Pat and I decided Bermuda would be an amazing destination for our honeymoon. Next door to our hotel was a moped rental station. The streets in Bermuda are extremely narrow and there aren’t many vehicles to speak of. Most everybody drive motorcycles and mopeds.
Seemingly easy to operate, I insisted we skip the one day rental and forced Pat to put down some cash for two mopeds for the entire week. When he hesitated I went on about how far we were from the city and how absolutely necessary (and fun) they were going to be on our trip.
I always get my way.
I underestimated how shaky I would be on the contraption and we spent some time driving through neighborhoods before taking our new toys on the main streets to the city for dinner. I’ll admit the “locals” in the neighborhoods looked entertained as I careened around their street corners with a wide grin on my face and one leg out to catch me should I fall.
I was shakey. It’s true. The Bermudian people tend to “tailgate” tourists on mopeds who like to follow the speed limit…or just a few mph slower than advised. Nothing wrong with being safe, as I always say.
But the sun was shining, the island was tropical, I was on my honeymoon and this was Bermuda dammit!! SO much fun to be had! I would not let the locals scare me off the streets with they’re tiny mopeds and their tendencies to tailgate. I was having the time of my life.
And then it started raining. I had never seen rain like this before. It was the kind of rain that could knock a large girl off a tiny moped. It was raining, it was dark, and it was cold. My groom and I finished our dinner in the city and hopped on our respective scooters to go back to our respective hotel room.
I’ll admit I was nervous about riding my moped back in the dark. I took a deep breath and had every confidence my prince would lead us back to our castle.
An hour later I was drenched, scared, and crying as I gripped the handle bars of my scooter. Gone was the wide grin I had been wearing earlier that afternoon. I wanted to go home. The neighborhoods we were whizzing through were not safe and we had no idea where we were going. We stopped when we reached a dock because we knew better than to scooting into a large body of water in search of our hotel and to our luck we happened upon local who smiled when we told him what hotel we were looking for.
He had some good news and some bad news.
And I’ll share it with you tomorrow because I’m tired…
*Photo Courtesy of virtualphotographystudio