Passes & Canyons Blog

I’ll tell you right off the bat that this event was far less than I expected it to be. I mean, with a name like National Motor Scooter Show, and the promise of 35 manufacturers represented, I expected something big and glitzy. It wasn’t.

The event was held out at the Adams County Fairgrounds from Friday to Sunday, in conjunction with a holistic crafts fair. That gives you an idea just how small it was.

Let’s give these folks their due, however. This was the first year for the event and most all things of this sort start out small. With any luck, they did well enough that they’ll be back in following years, getting bigger and better.

It was still interesting, however. In particular, I was curious to see the Vectrix VX-1 all-electric, plug-in scooter. I had read about this and was interested to see one. It’s a large scooter, seats two in comfort, and reportedly has a top speed of 62 mph. It was priced below a comparable gas-powered scooter so I’m thinking that if I was in the market for one of these things I’d go with the Vectrix.

Another one I found interesting was made by Schwinn. You know Schwinn, that old bicycle company. I didn’t know they had gone the motorized route. I do know you sure don’t see many Schwinn bicycles around any more. Adapt or die.

There was one motorcycle in among all the scoots, and that was a first for me as well. This was a Hyosung bike, made by a Korean manufacturer who is trying to break into the U.S. market. This particular model was a sport bike but I didn’t get the model.

So. Not a big event but I’m always interested in anything with two wheels and a motor. The more of all of us there are out there on the road the more clout we have in protecting our rights. Get your motor running!

Biker Quote for Today

Whatever it is, it’s better in the wind.

The middle-aged woman, wearing three-inch heels and a black cocktail dress, paused next to the little scooter. Popping open the storage box, she stashed the black shawl she was wearing and put on the denim jacket she took from the compartment. Pulling on a helmet, she shut the compartment, and rocked the scooter off its center stand, a little shakily thanks to the high heels. Finally, she unfurled the scooter’s protective skirt and draped it over her in order to keep the dirt and water off and to maintain her modesty. Then she drove away.

Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more. Heck we’re not even in the U.S. My wife and I witnessed this vignette last week in Paris. Clearly they do things differently over there.

Welcome to the land of $11 gasoline. While we moan about $4 gas, the Europeans paid that much and more for years. Now we pay $4 and they pay $11. Scooters are king on the Continent and you really know that’s true when you see this sort of scene.

Of course, it’s not as if I didn’t know about this, but our recent two weeks in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands brought home a number of points I didn’t realize.

For one, you really see the most bikes of all sorts in Paris, at least of the places we spent time. In Toulouse there are many, many scooters, too, but a really phenomenal number of bicycles. In Bruges, Belgium, bicycles constitute an even greater majority. At the train station in Bruges they had racks and racks and racks of bicycles, thousands of them, apparently parked there by their owners who were taking the train in to Brussels or Ghent to work.

In Rotterdam, where the city center was destroyed during World War II, it has been rebuilt with wide streets. Consequently, there were a lot more cars and nowhere near as many bikes, motorcycles, or scooters. Still, rather than sharing the streets with cars and trucks, bikes and scooters have a separate lane of their own on both sides of the street.

The key in all these cities, however, is public transportation and two-wheeled transportation. The Europeans saw the need for fuel-efficient transportation long ago. Now that we’re feeling the bite in gas costs we’re finally seeing the light, too. I have seen the future and it appears to work just fine.

Man oh man! Gas for $4 a gallon! Sure would be nice to get, oh, about 80 miles per gallon. Well, some people do. But you can bet they don’t do it in a Hummer.

On the other hand, take that little scooter next to that green Kawasaki in the photo below. That person is getting around 80 MPG. And probably having more fun getting to and from work than they ever have before.

Even better than that, Yamaha claims that their Vino 125 gets 96 MPG, and the Yamaha C3 is rated at 115 MPG. Now you’re talking saving real money!

Of course, there are some trade-offs. Those two little Yamahas don’t have much speed and you can’t take them on the highway. However, some bigger scooters don’t cost a lot more than those and can hit top speeds of 75 or more. It’s always a matter of trade-offs.

So, what kind of gas mileage does that Kawi guy get? On a sportbike like his (or hers, you never know) he’s surely in the 40-50 MPG range. The fact is, most motorcycles will get mileage in that approximate range, even the bigger ones. For example, I get around 45 MPG on both my Honda CB750 Custom and my Kawasaki Concours. A Honda Goldwing, one of the biggest bikes on the road, can get up to 40 MPG, although it does have six cylinders and therefore is not as efficient as the more common one-, two-, three- or four-cylinder bikes.

Another big road bike, the Harley-Davidson Road King, is rated at 54 MPG on the highway and 35 in the city. The Yamaha FJR1300A delivers around 40. Honda’s Shadow Spirit 1100 is rated at about 48 MPG on the highway and 38 in the city. (Sorry I don’t have city/highway splits for all these bikes.)

The mileage you get on a bike generally depends on the same three things that determines a car’s fuel efficiency: weight, your driving habits, and engine size. The big six-cylinder bikes eat more gas than a V-twin, but any bike with six cylinders is also a heavy bike. For a smaller bike, around 1,000 cc’s, you’ll get pretty much the same mileage with a V-twin or an inline four.

And then, as the city/highway splits show, speed matters. While I normally expect 45 MPG from my 1,000-cc Concours, riding easily on curvy mountain roads has at times given me as much as 55 MPG from the beast.

Do the math. A lot of other people already have. There are a lot more people joining us on the roads on two wheels. Welcome to the club.

Biker Quote for Today

Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul.