Just got back from Rhodes, amazing what you see out there. Most notable was all the Piaggio products everywhere, from many years ago. Typhoons, Runners, Zips, all of them. Whoever ran the Piaggio dealership there back in the day must've been one hell of a salesman. Then there are just loads of good old fashioned workhorses, still doing their thing after decades of work, like this little Honda which belonged to a street seller:
And this one, just randomly parked outside a restaurant:
Dad and his son picking up a takeaway:
And these were absolutely everywhere. I saw more in a day than I see in a month here in the UK. Clearly very popular over there. This one was on Symi Island, which has one road. Yes, one:
Random cafe racered BMW:
And we went on a scenic trip using Detecht, and let me tell you, this is bike country. The roads are absolutely
spectacular for biking. Sadly we were in a Kia Picanto hire car but the appreciation was still there. Came across this chap on his R1. Missing a few parts, but it was absolutely sparkling. This is very clearly this dude's pride and joy. Thought this might make a nice photo too:
I'll do another write up on Detecht at some point, I bought a year sub and it's already given me one of the most memorable drives I've ever had so I'm expecting good things (bit like Calimoto, but it has a collision alert and tracking system for spouses and stuff).
A bit more of a sombre topic was their lax attitude to safety. It's genuinely staggering, I'd say maybe 30% of all the bikers I saw out there were wearing lids. I got overtaken at one point by an underbone bike (Honda Wave or similar) which had three kids on it, in flip flops, shorts, no helmets, it was quite something. And this wasn't just small bikes either, I saw loads of larger machines with helmetless riders, often with pillion, also with no helmet. A lot of the cars on the island are very clearly not roadworthy either and loads of drivers are driving around with their phone permanently glued to their ear too. Add to this that there are very limited streetlights and a massive drinking / party culture, and it goes a long way to explaining the absolutely insane amount of memorials I saw on the side of the roads.
Oh and in the four days we were there, I didn't see a single ambulance or cop car. I reckon if you have an off, you'd best have mates to come and get you because the emergency services seem completely non-existent.
