When I bought my new Vespa, I made sure to buy crashbars–steel bars that run along the cowls and legshields, and are supposed to protect the paint job from roadrash in minor drops. Today, I discovered that they worked!
I had to drive to work today, and pulling into the parking garage, I took a bit sharp of a turn with the throttle open a little bit. With all the snow and ice, WSDOT has laid down a lot of sand and gravel (no salt: all the salty runoff kills the salmon runs), so I was accelerating and turning on dirt, basically. And I dropped the bike.
I was only going five miles an hour, so I scraped my knee like I was a seven-year-old tripping on pavement while running. But there’s not a scratch on the body of my Vespa. The crashbars took all the road rash!