Chapter 4: La Spezia

I thank my lucky stars that I decided to buy an MSR fuel bottle. The thing holds about a liter of gas, it's small enough to fit in my glove compartment, and absolutely saved my patootie getting to La Spezia. I dumped the whole bottle into my tank before making the 45 minute trip from Cinque Terre and when I pulled into the first gas station in La Spezia I was still running on fumes. I was even shutting off the scoot and coasting down hills. Luckily I made it without having to run along side and push.

Not everything was sunshine and rainbows though. La Spezia was the site of my first (and let's hope only) accident. Thankfully there were no injuries, but it definitely took a good chunk out of the car, the scooter, and Carlo's insurance. It was dumb, stupid, and really shouldn't have even happened. After all La Spezia was just supposed to be a pit stop; a city to fill up on gas, grab a bite, and continue on to a castle turned hostel I booked in Massa. Of course, that didn't happen thanks to my sudden urge to collect stickers.

Before leaving Milan, Carlo put a sticker on the belly of my Vespa that read "Vespa Club D'Italia Melegnano". With a combination of his emphatic hand gestures and my google translate app, I understood that he wanted me to try and collect stickers from the various VDI branches. Up until this point I had kind of forgot about the stickers, it wasn't until Cinque Terre when got a Whatsapp message from the Vespa messiah himself that I was reminded of my duty. Cinque Terre didn't have a branch, but I was determined to get a sticker from the next closest club in La Spezia.

Back in the city, I stopped to get lunch and asked the barmen if he had ever heard of the club. He asked someone, and they asked someonelse - I felt like I was breaking a news story. Eventually the game of telephone got back to me and a fashionable Italian man asked me where I parked my scooter. I thought I was going through some weird initiation ritual, but it turns out the guy figured (correctly) that, rather try to give me directions, it would just be easier to hop on his scooter and drive me to the spot. He was nuts, I'm surprised I didn't get into an accident trying to follow that guy. We finally arrived at some random office building, he held up three fingers, waved, then turned around and scooted off into the sunset. I arrived at the third floor where, to my delight, I found the Vespa Club D'Italia La Spezia branch.... closed. There were no hours on the door, it was 3 o'clock on a Tuesday, but the club was closed nonetheless. I took a quick snapshot of the door for keeps sake and headed out back out the Vespa, chalking it up as an experience and calculating the time it would take for me to get to Massa.

I don't remember a ton after that. I remember that my GPS was acting up and I had to use a different app to find my way back to the main road. I also remember stopping at the stop sign, looking to the right, but a bunch of scooters were blocking my view. I inched forward, but I must've been inching a little too fast because the next thing I know I'm on the ground with the scooter behind me revving and bystanders trying to help me up. I was fine, it was just the shock of it all - the fact that the scooter was totally miss-aligned kinda freaked me out and the fact that nobody spoke English didn't help.

Two ambulances showed up - I had to like yell at the paramedics to not take me to the hospital. I was fine, honestly the scooter took most of the impact. The police took years and when they finally got there only one of them spoke English. Three hours later I ended up with a fat insurance claim and two tickets - one for not seeing the car and another for not having an international drivers licence. Apparently the two police officers Carlo talked to in Melegnano weren't fully versed in La Spezia law. Live and learn I guess.

Anyways, it took four hundred euros (and who knows how many more are coming from insurance) and some awesome local scooter dudes who fixed my scoot pro bono, but I'm back on the road. Thankfully Sasha found me a cheap hotel to spend a few nights to figure stuff out in La Spezia. Carlo was super understanding, same with the hostel owners in Massa who canceled my reservation at no charge. I guess everything works itself out.

Tune in next milenum for my blog on Massa and Pisa.

Chapter 3: Cinque Terre

I set off from Genova, looking at the road signs which gave me no help whatsoever. The road signs in Italy are maybe the worst things designed ever. There's a perfect 90-degree angle where you can see which exit points to which city, anything past that and you're dead as water. The road itself was one of the most picturesque roads on the trip. I came up with this little gem: the buzz of my engine complemented the sound of waves smacking against the rocky shoreline. Wow, talk about painting a landscape with words! Shakespeare would be jealous. The views were so nice I had to force myself to pay attention to the road. Eventually, the road elevated up past the shoreline and paying attention to the was no longer an issue.

The road leading to Cinque Terre were littered with potholes and had lots of winds and bends. I was paying so much attention to not crashing that I really didn't even realize that had made it Vernazza - the first city - until I saw the pastel colored building.

One fun fact I learned about Cinque Terre is that none of the towns have gas station, and I had just started to tap into my 2.5 L reserve tank. An Italian native stopped as I was re-started my Vespa to tell me that pushing my wasp up the mountain to Corniglia would be "not possible". After I assuring him it was possible, I kick started La Papera and ran alongside her in first gear - anything more and it surely would have been not possible.

I finally arrived in Riomaggiore sweaty and tired, ready for a bed to lie in. Unfortunately, that bed was in what I would call a one bedroom apartment with four bunk beds in it, but what the owner would apparently call a hostel. I wasn't too fidgety about it though and when one of the other guys in the hostel offered me a drink in the bar below I figured I was only staying one night, so I better make it count. I feel as though I chatted with the globe that night - along with two Americans, a Canadian and a Mexican in the hostel, the African pub owner came out to check on us, and the Swedish mom-daughter combo at the bar were making fun of our accent, or lack thereof, when we told the bartender "Grazie". The rest of the night was kind of a blur, but I did end up making it back to the single bedroom eight-bed apartment A-ok.

I spent the next morning in Cinque Terre, the plan was to visit Guvano Beach which lies just past Corniglia. To get to the beach you have to go thru the hiking trail, so I did 1/100th of the famous Cinque Terre hike no big deal. Funnily enough I ran into the two Americans I talked to last night running along the trail - they had apparently thought of going to the beach too, but someone on the train had told them it was shut down. Bummer.

I was running on fumes and decided to set my GPS to the closest gas station in La Spezia. It was only a 40-minute drive, but it was all uphill and I wasn't sure how much more distance my little 2.5L reserve tank could cover. Well the blog's getting kind of long, so I'll end it and call it a cliff-hanger. Tune in next year to see if I make it.

Chapter 2: Genova

I will never understand why we translate city names out of their native language. Road signs are x10 more confusing when you're a young handsome American lad who doesn't know if he's supposed to be heading to "Genoa" or "Genova". Despite the linguistical flaw, I made the two hour trip to  GenOVA in a skin-blistering four hours and twenty minutes. This is thanks in part to the fact that my scoot's little 125cc engine can only scoot so fast. This means that I'm banned (no big deal, I've spent a week in Italy and I'm already banned from something) from using the high-speed motorways and must resort to the smaller Strada Provinciale or SP roads.

I don't mind taking these SP roads because they force me to really take my time and enjoy the Italian countryside. The roads to Genova were especially bendy, which made them a hotbed for gutsy motorcyclists that pass you on blind corners as casually as if they were stopping for a stop light. For my first trip I felt like I did alright - I managed to stay upright which is always a win and, by my calculations, only 10.4 motorcycles passed me per hour. When I pulled over for lunch I think my scooter was the only vehicle that had under 100 Horse Power.

Genova itself was a mixture of beautiful and interesting. Interestingly beautiful if you will. The city itself was HUGE! When I came out of the tunnel and into the view of the city I let out an audible gasp. I don't know what I was expecting but it wasn't this:

The city is also on the coast, so there were, of course, some very Italian-esk beautiful beach towns like Boccadasse and Portofino. My hostel manager said he would rather starve than buy a meal at any of these beach towns, so I headed his advice and brought my cool little sack lunch - a turkey and provolone sandwich, an apple, and some gross Italian chips - and burned daylight.

That brings me to the interesting part. I'm officially naming Genova the unofficial scooter capital of the world. The place had more scooters that people, that's an unofficial fact. I rolled up thinking I would be a mini-celebrity in my sweet little throwback Vespa, but I was vanilla ice cream compared to some of these scooters. I almost wish I would have broken down here because there must've been a repair shop every thousand feet. Knowing my luck though I'm sure I'll break down somewhere West of Tahiti.

It was also just a weird place in general - the tourist attractions ranged from historical UNESCO-protected sights to an exhibit for the blind to the largest aquarium in Europe. Also, I almost got round-house kicked by some Italian dude who yelled at me for god knows what, so I'd pin that under weird too. I can't believe I thought of this place as an in-between city.

I'm a week or so behind on my recaps, but I kind of like doing it this way. Maybe it's because I like to chew on the intricacies of my travel experience and digest it into the belly of introspection and thought-provoking discussion, or maybe it's because I'm super lazy. Either way, my recap of Cinque Terre is on the horizon.

Chapter 1: Buying the Scoot

Wow, what a week. Right now it's about 12 AM here, but I'm about to leave Secugnago and I figured I'd better write a blog. Also, I'm wide awake thanks to my awesome possum Air BnB host offering me espresso an hour ago after our approx. 3 hour-long dinner. Anyways, I'll give you guys a quick rundown of what went down.

So to start out, I stayed in Secugnago - it's a small city in Lombardy and about an hour outside Milan. Getting to the Secugnago from Malpensa was an adventure in and of itself, but I'll save that story for a rainy day. All you really need to know is that I got in around 1 AM, which wasn't great because I was meeting Carlo - my Italian Vespa aficionado - in Melegnano at 8 AM the next morning. Speaking of Carlo, he is an absolute character. His garage consisted of no less than three Vespas, two Mopeds, and one go-kart. He doesn't speak any English, nor I Italian, yet he talked to me in Italian the entire time. He is the nicest guy in the world and I still can't believe the lengths he went to help make my trip possible.

The major problem we ran into was this: under Italian law, foreigners can own vehicles, but they can't get insured without an international drivers license, which I didn't have. I figured that it just wasn't going to happen then - after all, when you hit a bureaucratic wall in the US that's pretty much the end of it. In Italy, on the other hand, hitting the wall is just the first stop in an eight-hour-long journey from friend to friend to see who knows how to get around it. And that's exactly what we did. We went from Carlo's scooter club President to his mechanic to his parts dealer, back to his president then to his mom's house and, finally, to an insurance agency where somebody finally spoke English and could tell me what the heck was going on.

The Vespa parts store, one of many stops we made 

Basically, I couldn't get my own insurance in Italy, but what I could do was get onto Carlo's insurance and ride the scooter as an adjunct. The only problem here was that if anything was to happen to the scooter Carlo would be liable. So we ended up making a good old-fashioned Italian handshake agreement - I would pay for the scooter, he would officially own it, I would be liable for any damages, and he would agree to sell the Vespa for me so long as I brought it back to Melegnano. Oof dah! Or, as Carlo said multiple times throughout the day, ay yi yi!

Talk about starting a trip off with a bang. I'm heading to Genoa tomorrow morning, I'll probably write another blog my last day there. Ciao ciao for now.

The End of an Era

*Editors note: I started this blog in August while I was on the road, but never got the chance to finish it. Also, if you're looking for the full blog experience you should open this in another window while you read this sad sad blog.

I don't quite know how to say this so I'm just going to give it to you straight - I sold the scooter. I can only imagine the ramifications of this news, surely they're will be riots in the streets, major city shutdown, heck, I wouldn't be shocked if the NASDAQ dropped a couple of hundred points. With that said, it's something that had to be done. I believe Dumbledore said it best: "There is a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right." And while riding the Vespa from Denver to Boston might have been the right thing to do, it certainly wouldn't be easy, and so I sold it.

So I'm moving out to Boston! With the help of Mom & Dad (thanks M&D) I bought a 1998 Jeep and am making the 36 hour trip from Denver to Boston via Minneapolis. I'm on day three of what should be a four day trip and so far have passed though a few main cities - Omaha, Minneapolis, Madison, Chicago, Buffalo. I never really stopped to see the sites, but from what I saw out my window zipping by them at 75 mph they looked nice. Lots of tall buildings. As for Cleveland, I'm on the rooftop of my hostel and the city definitely passes the tall buildings test.

Keeping Up with the Scooter

I always used to think that my ability to trouble shoot a problem was right up there with the best of 'em - Einstein, Jobs, Carpentier. Lately, just keeping the ol' Vespa running has really pushed this skill to the limit. Yup, the engineers of 1979 were really trying to trip up old Nelly when they came up with the less-than-modern hodgepodge that is the Vespa 50 Special. Their latest trick resulted in the scoot conking out on me just three days before the DAT. While I applaud their efforts, I'm proud to announce that the #1 Vespa in the world is back in operation. Here's how I was able to fix up the scoot and keep on riding.

So first thing's first, since the engine wouldn't start I knew that it had to be one of four things: Gas, air, compression, or spark. Actually, wait, first thing's more first - a new roommate was moving in and temporarily put all of his stuff (including two sandbags?) in the garage. So as you're reading this be extra impressed with the fact that my work radius was tighter than that of the average Joe.

Anyways, my initial thought was that the problem was going to have to do with gas or air not getting to the engine. I had put twice the amount of oil I should have in my last tank of gas, so I figured that it might've somehow gotten clogged in there. I went ahead and fashioned a makeshift siphon out of some rubber hose and sucked the gas outta there.

Now obviously it's kinda tough to fit my iPhone down into the tank to snap a picture, but it turned out that idea numero uno was a complete and utter bust. Nothing was blocking the intake tube and the gas didn't look like it was clumping up or anything. So now I'm back to the drawing board. I figured that the problem might lie in that pesky idle jet that has caused me problems in the past. Since I already had no gas in the tank I might as well take the whole thing off and check the jet.

This ended up being a small pain because, in taking out the tank, I knocked off the fuel lever. I feel like I should have known this was happening, if not by just using my head, just by how annoying it was being to get the tank off.

And therein lies the problem.

Anyways, I quickly went ahead and checked the idle jet and it was...

...clean as a whistle. Shoot, so now I'm thinking that maybe gas isn't the problem. I also couldn't see any leaks anywhere (although I didn't take anything out and run it under a water bath so who knows), so I figured that compression wasn't the issue either. That only leaves one thing left: the spark. I quickly whipped out my handy dandy wrench set that my UNCLE gave me for my birthday (I credited my grandma on my last blog and Uncle Craig wanted to make it clear that he was the gift giver) and yanked out the spark plug. Sure enough, the thing was blacker than grandma's coffee.

Luckily I had a replacement plug ready to go. So out with the old, in with the new, bada-bing bada-boom, should be as simple as that right? I thought so too. The new one was screwing in all right, but for some reason I just couldn't get the spark plug cap back over the plug.

At this point, I was confused as Confucius. I felt like I had solved the problem and now the problem was just cheating! So I cheated too - I went on the internet and googled "Spark plug cap won't click." Those turned out to the be the magic words. Apparently there's a little piece of metal that has to be unscrewed before you can pop the plug back into its cap. But honestly, who would have known that?

Okay sure it looks obvious NOW, but I think my brain checked out and went on vacation once it figured out the problem was only going to cost me a $2 spark plug rather than a $2,000 engine rebuild. Regardless, I'm glad to be back on the road.

This is another thing that gets me so revved up about dentistry. In one of my earlier blogs I mentioned that working with my hands gives me a sort of intrinsic satisfaction and is one of the reasons why I fell in love with the profession. But dentistry will allow me to do stuff like I did in this blog everyday. You work on broad issues, have the knowledge to diagnose the problem, then find out a way to fix it. And when I'm a dentist the problem won't just be a bad spark plug, but maybe a bad tooth. When I fix it, the end result won't just be my ability to ride a cool scooter around town; it will allow another human being to live a healthier life. With that said, dental school is still a long way out and I still have a ways to go before I can start fixing people's smiles. In the meantime though, I'm sure my Vespy will keep me busy.

Breaking Down the DAT

Woooooooh I'm finally done. After over a month of studying I'm so glad to be over and done with the DAT. If you're about to take the test, I feel yah. I remember reading a ton of these breakdowns to try and distract myself from studying. Don't get discouraged, take the ADA practice test a week before to gauge how you're doing and you'll be fine. Ok ok, on to the scores.

I know my scores aren't the best on the block, but I'm proud all the same. Anyways, I'll get to the meat and potatoes.

Bio: 18
I just finished up a bio major, so I thought I was pretty safe here. With that said, it was a very tricky section - I must've marked 20 of the first 40 questions the first time though. Just keep swimming and you'll come out ok. It's worth knowing all of the little terms like deuterstome or arthropod because you can rule out a lot of the answer choices by knowing which one's are NOT correct. As for studying, I did Cliffs and DAT Destroyer once - the breadth of the destroyer definitely matched MY DAT. Either way, I'm just glad I made up for it in my other sections.

Gen Chem: 19
I felt really strong in this section and was actually surprised that I didn't get above a 20. There's a lot a conceptual questions; Chad's Videos and DAT Bootcamp hit the nail on the head with this section.

Ochem: 30
Whaaaaaaaaat. I'll start by saying I got a C in Ochem so I really studied my patootie off for this section. I used Chad's as my main resource, but I went over the Destroyer once (but it was overkill for MY SPECIFIC TEST). Biggest tip I can give you here is find a way to honestly teach yourself the material. There's so many more questions that deal with basic stuff like stereochemistry and Sn1/Sn2/E1/E2 compared to some weird Tollens' Test reaction. For this section and Gen Chem I would go over all of this stuff in front of a whiteboard and act like I was teaching a class - sure it's kinda awkward but it worked.

PAT: 23
I did 8 Bootcamp tests and never scored over a 21. Bootcamp gets your timing down; my personal method was to skip right to hole punching and cubes to just snatch up the easy points, then worry about folding, angles, TFE, and keyholes in that order. I honestly thought I was bombing this section - just push though it and remember that if you're having a hard time with a question guess and move on. It's not worth it in the section to spend >1 min on a question.

RC: 22
I did 3 Bootcamp tests and never scored over a 19. I only practiced the Kaplin method (AKA number paragraphs and note-take as you're reading), but at the start of my second passaged I decided to go for Search and Destroy. For MY SPECIFIC DAT the questions were very straight-to-the-point. I'd recommend you practice both reading the passage straight though then answering the questions AND using S&D.

QR: 19
Fight though it. I kept telling myself that this section is what separated the men from the boys (or women from the girls). Just like the PAT, if a questions going to take your more than a minute to solve guess and move on. This test is all about efficiency and speed. Oh also, my test center let me use the keyboard to type in calculations - if there was one improvement I could make on DAT Bootcamp it would bet to add in this function.

Here's the blog where I recorded all of my practice scores and material. Special thanks to Ari and the rest of the DAT Bootcamp Team. Dr. Christiansen is a total dweeb (kidding) and an awesome teacher. In one sentence, use Chad's as a base point, Bootcamp as a way a find out what you don't know, and Destroyer to get 30's. And if you're like I was, neverously reading breakdowns in between study sessions, try not to overly stress about it - you'll 't kill it!