Category: scooters

This morning we returned from an over night camping trip at the Roll In The Hay Scooter Rally organized by the Gem City Rollers of Dayton, Ohio. This is only the second rally that we have been to, and the first camping one. All I can say is, we’d do it again in a heartbeat.

The event started on Friday night, but we decided to join up on Saturday morning because we needed to drop off our daughter at a friend’s house for a sleep over (she opted out of camping with us). We meet up with a few other folks that we had met from the WKRP rally earlier this year and headed north to the camp site near Spring Valley, Ohio.

After getting the tent setup and filled, we had time to walk around and take in the variety of scooters that arrived (and were still arriving) for the event. We went out for a group ride around Noon that took us through some fantastic back country in Warren county and ended in north Lebanon were we stopped for food. After lunch, there was another twisty not-so-direct trip back to the camp ground.

From there the afternoon/evening was filled with socializing, beer drinking, pulled pork eating, raffles, scooter driving/handling contests and devolved into karaoke, dancing. drinking and more socializing. We knocked off around 11PM and headed back to the tent for some relief from dry contact lenses and a chance for some shuteye. Others kept it going until around 3AM (and realistically, that’s about the time that we actually got to sleep).

Morning came at 5:25AM for me – I was wide awake and couldn’t sleep, so I stayed in the tent listening to the morning unfold. Around 6:30, we were both up and ready to get rolling. After whipping all of the heavy dew off the scoots and breaking down camp as quietly as we could, we were back on the road around 7AM, heading south, on our way home.

I put a few photos up on flickr.

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fun, scootering

Recognizing the rather grave safety implications to traffic signal detectors that don’t that a scooter or motorcycle is waiting, the Ohio Department of Transportation has provided an phone number and email address to report bustage.

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scootering

My wife and I rode in the WKRP Scooter Rally in Cincinnati last weekend (April 4th). It was our first rally since we starting riding last year. It was a huge amount of fun and an opportunity to meet and talk with a lot of like minded scooter folk.

Two things that seemed to come up in discussions were 1) the setup that we were using to talk to each other while scooting and 2) how to best mount things to the scooter (GPSs being the most popular item). If on the off chance any of the WKRP folks who were curious and wanted more details might somehow find this blog post; well, here are the details:

[Full disclosure: if you buy from the Amazon links that I provide here I make a few pennies off of the sale. It doesn’t add any additional cost to the product if you buy via these links.]

For scooter to scooter communication I picked up an inexpensive set of Midland handsets from Amazon (specifically the MIDLAND GXT900VP4 2 Way 22 Channels Radio) These are great little handsets and have the advantage of allowing for ‘group codes’ so that if more than two people want to be on a sort of party line, they can join in. Another advantage is that they don’t skimp on the provided accessories which include rechargeable batteries, charger (both auto and home!) and some cheap over the ear boom mics. You might be able to make those over the ear pieces work in your helmet but experience tells me you won’t be satisfied by the results.

For best results grab one of the helmet headset kits from Midland. Be aware that there are two different kits depending on whether you have a full face helmet (Midland AVPH2 Closed Face Helment Headset for Midland GMRS) or an open face/modular helmet (Midland AVPH1 Open Face Helment Headset for Midland GMRS).

One of the advantages over the helmet mounted units I saw at the rally is that the Midland kit gives you a push to talk button that you can velcro attach to the left hand grip so that you don’t have to take your hands off the scooter to initiate a call. Granted, this does leave you with a bit of connecting wire that you need to sort out, but typically that isn’t a big deal. Another huge advantage is that buying the two radio kit and two helmet kits is much cheaper (~$120USD) than buying one of the helmet mounted units (~$200-300 each). It also leaves you with a pair of handsets you can use while hiking, camping, working in the yard or wherever you don’t want to have to shout between.

For mounting GPSs or just about anything else to the scooter, get yourself straight over to the RAM Mounting Systems web site. They have a handy configuration wizard that will guide you through the parts and options necessary to mount whatever you want to your ride. Seriously, if RAM doesn’t make a mount for it, then it probably doesn’t exist. I have a ball mount on my GTV that I can mount (using the same attachment arm) either a GPS (Garmin nüvi 660) or a camera (via a threaded tripod-type shoe). Both are solid and easy to get on and off.

Hopefully these little tidbits might help someone who is curious about mounts and scooter to scooter communications.

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gadgets, scootering, wkrp

A Japanese study shows that riding on two wheels makes you smarter. Thank you Vespa.

It might be telling that the test was conducted with riders in their 40s and 50s. That would tend to screen out the young morons who weave in and out of highway traffic on their ballburners wearing nothing but sunglasses. So either you are smart enough not to do that in the first place and make it to 40 or natural selection cleans things up and you don’t make it to 40. That doesn’t appear to be part of the study, however.

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cognition, science, vespa

In an amazingly progressive move from embarrassingly staid Cincinnati, the city has introduced dedicated parking spots around the central business district dedicated to two wheeled vehicles. Though in typical Cincinnati fashion, they introduce the parking spots at the onset of winter when there will be fewer riders to actually take advantage of them. What I hope doesn’t happen is that they assess the usage of the spots over winter and conclude that no one is using them.

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cincinnati, parking, scootering

This puff piece over on Slate (Get Your Motor Runnin’) leaves me shaking my head. ‘So, are you tired of pumping $4+ gas into you Hummer? Then the ‘solution’ is to go out and buy the largest, most fuel inefficient motorcycle that you can afford’. Yeah, that’s the ticket! Idiot. Apparently, anything under 650cc is ‘less-ambitious’.

My own experience is that a 250cc Vespa scooter is more than enough for commuting to/from work and running errand around town. My scoot will do over 70 MPH, it rarely sees 50. I am not planning on driving across the country or entering a race. Why would I ‘need’ anything more?

Knucklehead even recommends a big bike for city dwellers overlooking the fact that a smaller, more nimble scooter would do better in city traffic, city hazards and parking. Overall, scooters get short shift in the article that is nominally supposed to be about fuel efficiency, but instead points the reader at the ‘bigger is better, more expensive is better’ right wing dream.

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crap, dubious, economy, peakoil, scootering