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CNF2002 wrote:Wow! Your blog makes me want to buy a scooter for around town.

Same here, last night I was thinking about a KSR110 or XR100 Motard. I love my VTR250, but I liked just hopping on my little 50cc mini dirtbike and taking off aroundthe neighborhood.

The scooter is a real blast. I think it would compliment a motorcycle quite nicely.

Thanks for all the well wishes. I passed my road test, by the way. Story coming soon.

Great news on passing! Looking forward to the write up.

September 24, 2006

This morning I got up fairly early because I wanted to get in some practice time on the scooter for my test on Monday. The forecast said it was supposed to start storming in the early afternoon. I went down to the local strip mall figuring it wouldn’t be crowded on a Sunday morning. When I pulled into the first area I wanted to use there was a cop parked in the lot watching people go by. Although I wasn’t doing anything illegal I wasn’t comfortable loitering around in his presence so I went around to another area of the lot. I practiced for about 10 minutes until I was dizzy from riding in circles. I watched some guy in a pick up truck dump some garbage into a swampy area beside the parking lot. Then I noticed my police officer friend had moved to this side of the lot and was watching me practice. I don’t know why but that gave me a guilty conscious so I went back to check the other area of the lot. Now there was a young kid over there riding around on a pocket motorcycle. He looked more wobbly than myself so I decided to just leave.

The weather had warmed up and there were lots of other bikes on the road. I was having a blast just riding on the way home and flicking the bike this way and that way. With all my low speed practicing I was feeling pretty confident in my skills. The ride home was way to short so I pulled up to our house and started tooting my little horn underneath the window to get Nalian to come out and go for a ride.

Nalian reluctantly came outside and started up the bike. It took her so long to get her bike warmed up and gear ready I took all my gear off and took a nap in the driveway. At this point the sky looked pretty stormy so we decided on a short ride to a local coffee shop. We got to the café just as it started to sprinkle. We went in and ordered our coffee figuring we would wait out the first 15 minutes of the rain to clear the slickness off the roads.

The storms never came and we ended up riding another 10-15 miles westward before turning back towards home. We only ended up riding in a few sprinkles of rain. I was actually hoping we would get caught in some showers just so I could get the riding in the rain experience under my belt.

September 25, 2006

Monday morning I got up extra early so that I would have time to practice before my road test. I was quite nervous as I didn’t really know what to expect. It seems like everyone has such wildly different experiences of the test. I had also heard tales from other local scooterists who were given a hard time about taking their test on the scooter.

I arrived at about 8:45 for my 9:30 appointment. I practiced doing figure-8’s and small circles for as long as I could without getting too dizzy. That took about 15 minutes. I slowly ambled inside, filled out my forms and sat down to wait. Finally, a little after 9:30, the officer doing the test came out. There was a teenage guy there who was taking his car driving test. He was called first and he pissed the officer off because it was his third try (with the same officer) and his paperwork was filled out all wrong and he was just a mess. When my turn came I gave the officer my paperwork and he asked me how long I had been riding and was fairly stand-off-ish. I suppose it is part of the job, but it made me a little more nervous. He told me to get my stuff together and ride my bike down to the back alley behind the building and he would meet me there when he was done with the other guy.

I ended up backing out of the parking space at the same time as the young kid with the officer and riding around the parking lot in front of them. That was a dumb move because of course someone jumped out in front of me and I had to stop short and almost fell over, then I forgot my turn signals, and was just generally riding poorly. So I was afraid I had failed before even starting.

I took the 10 minutes while I was waiting for the cop to continue practicing my low speed maneuvers. I was surprised that there were no lines on the ground or cones or anything. All along I had been practicing in parking lots and using the lines as guides.

When the officer came out he told me that if at any point during the test I put my foot down it was an automatic failure. He said I needed to do two figure-8’s, two tight circles in each direction, and ride to the end of the alley, U-turn, and ride back towards him, accelerating and breaking on command. I generally have a horrible memory so I was afraid I would forget one of the steps or mix up the order.

I gave it my best shot, I know I did the maneuvers very sloppily. Since he didn’t specify how big the figure-8s and circles needed to be I went wider than I had been practicing, and they were really more oval like than circle like. I also may have done one of them three times not twice. I was shaky and it was not by best work. Fortunately, that didn’t matter as I passed! I think for this officer his big focus was that I could maneuver around at slow speeds without putting a foot down.

He signed my paperwork and I went back inside and they printed out my temporary license! I can legally ride at night and 2-up!

I went to work straight from the test so I couldn’t joy-ride around too much. I did have a great ride home however and was elated to see many other scooterists on the road. I ran into an older gentleman on a Vespa with a sidecar and a few other scooters. I even had one other scooter who tooted their horn at me as I was tooting at them! (It’s really the little things that excite us, huh?)

Veda wrote: Nalian reluctantly came outside and started up the bike. It took her so long to get her bike warmed up and gear ready I took all my gear off and took a nap in the driveway.

It was 5 minutes!! And I was barely awake when you pulled up. Brat.

This weekend has been the perfect fall riding weekend with sunny skies and temps in the 70's. If only they could all be like this. I put about 200 miles on the scoot between yesterday and today, I'm almost at 1500 miles now.

I think my favorite thing about riding in the fall is to ride on a tree lined road and have the leaves falling off the trees and blowing all around me. Of course, I may feel different in a couple weeks when those leaves become piles of wet slippery garbage on the ground!

In contrast to this weekends riding, my morning commutes are getting downright cold. I ordered a windshield for my bike, which should be here next week. A Slipstreamer Spitfire. Hopefully that will keep some of the coldness of the wind off my chest. I also hear, from other scooterists, that it gives you an extra 5 or so mph on the top end. That might not sound like a lot, but it'll mean the difference in capping out at 52 vs. 57 mph. Now that I'm more comfortable pushing my bike more I am seeing the limits of it's little 125cc engine.

I'm also debating some pants... I tried on some Firstgear HT Overpants, which had a thermal lining. I was actually going to buy them today, but it turns out the shop is closed on Mondays. I'm not sure if I'm going to spend the money this year though. I had no idea this was going to become such an expensive hobby. I may try adding an extra layer by putting on my plastic rain pants to keep the wind out on cold days. I hear wearing the plastic pants as a middle layer between thermal underwear and jeans helps keep the cold out.

I have to give kudos to my Sidi boots. On the cold mornings my feet are the only thing on me that aren't cold. Well, my feet and the top of my head.

For those following my helmet saga, I was able to squish some of the foam in the front of my Shoei down and it is much more bearable now. Also, Scorpion took my second non-fitting helmet back, which was great.

Off to enjoy the dwindling riding days! My winter riding goal is to commute until Thanksgiving. Six weeks!

Chilly Mornings and my first drop

In re-reading my last post I realize that I didn't know cold back then. It's funny to think back, first I thought 55F was cold... then I did high 40's and survived, but didn't think I could go much lower, then it dipped into the low 40's and I got worried. This morning was 32F on my morning commute. It's actually not as cold as it sounds now that I've gotten my gear figured out. As I've mentioned in other threads I got a pair of the FirstGear Overpants. They are awesome and my legs never get cold. I'm still wearing the same jacket I bought and wore in August. I've layered a good fleece under it and installed my windscreen. The windscreen makes a huge difference keeping the cold off my chest. It also does give me that much sought after extra 5mph. So the only thing that leaves is my hands. I've just been using my leather motorcycle gloves over some latex gloves. I'm not sure the latex gloves really help. I couldn't feel my hands by the time I got to work. I would definitely be concerned about frost bite riding in any colder temps with these gloves.

My co-workers all think I'm crazy for riding in this weather. I tell them it's a lot like skiing. I think that is a good analogy for riding in cooler temps. Yeah, you are cold, but you're having fun so your mind isn't really on the cold. Plus I think adrenaline helps keep you warm.

I probably will put the bike away soon. I've set Thanksgiving as my official put away date, but we'll see how things go. I also determined I wanted to put 2,000 miles on the odometer before winter and I'm at 1,800 now. I'm really enjoying the advangtages of using the scooter in traffic. Even though I'm legally a motorcycle, I keep telling myself that if everyone thinks I'm a moped, I might as well play by the moped rules. That means riding on the shoulder/bicycle lane. I know it's totally illegal but so worth it in stand-still rush hour traffic. Moped that!

I actually think with some better gloves I could keep riding further into the winter. My two concerns would be frost on the roads in the a.m. and my bike running in the cold. These last few days I've had a heck of a time getting it started up.

Speaking of starting and warming up bikes... I've joined the ranks of those who have dropped their bikes. Well, I half dropped it - Scoot Scoot Riot landed against a post at a 45 degree angle. Unfortunately, the scooter has a dummy switch in the kickstand so I can't run the bike while it is on the stand. So usually I will start the bike up and lean it against something while it warms up and I gear up. I am working in a new office now so today was the first cold weather day my bike needed to warm up. I found a post and leaned against it. Stupid me, I leaned the tip of my handlebar against the post. Anyone see a problem with that?

The handlebars turned and over went the scoot. Fortunately it landed at a 45 degree angle with my helmet wedged between the scooter and the post. No mechanical damage to the scooter. I'll have to look it over in the daylight to see if there are any scrapes. I think my helmet, which had been sitting on the floorboard, took the brunt of the damage.

The stupidest thing is I feel like I sat there staring at it laying over, engine running, forever before I picked it up. I was just dumbfounded. "Huh? My scooter is laying over? I smell gas? What do I do?"

I put my bike away for the winter about a month ago... Today it was over 60 degrees in Boston. Of course, I took the bike out.

Here is a video, the view from the top of Nalian's helmet.

http://blip.tv/file/127381

It must be cool to see yourself on video.

Nice jacket, BTW. One of the women in our club has a pink version of that and a matching pink and black helmet.