Passes & Canyons Blog

I had this idea that it would be fun and interesting to get my hands on a scooter and go everywhere on it for one week. I’ve always liked scooters, and have thought for a long time that they make more sense for short errands than just about any other vehicle, but I’ve never owned one or had a chance to ride them much.

So I called my friend Sue, who scoots, and asked if she was using hers, and if not, could I borrow it. No way, she said, she rides it all the time. But she suggested I contact Tai and John Beldock at Erico Motorsports to see if they would loan me one. I did, and Tai was very nice about agreeing to it.

On Tuesday I picked up this Piaggio Fly 50. It has some mods that give it more power so it does actually get up to decent speed. It didn’t take me long to feel comfortable on it and off I went.

There are a few things I’ve had to adjust to. The speedometer shows kilometers very clearly in white, with miles very hard to read in red. So I’ve figured out that with the needle straight up I’m going about 35 mph. If the needle is sitting on the white 40 that’s about 25 mph. At 65 in the white it equals approximately 40 mph. Close enough.

After getting the Fly home the first errand I ran was to the grocery store. I wondered if I should be conservative on what I bought but I figured I’d go for it. The bag on the back swallowed two gallons of mile, a honeydew melon, and a bunch of other stuff. Not a problem.

When Judy got home I loaded her on the back and we went to pick up my car where I’d left it. It may be a 50cc scoot but we still managed to exceed the posted speed limit riding two-up.

The next day Sue and I went out on our respective scoots and I had a chance to ride hers to compare. Yes, it has more power, but hey, on city streets how fast do you need to go? And the Fly goes as fast as the traffic.

I was possibly going to need to go to Boulder today, and that would have been a journey, but it didn’t happen. On Saturday, though, I am going to go with Sue and her scooter club on a ride they have planned. Figure I might as well get right into the scooting culture.

So I’m having fun. I’d never want to trade my motorcycles for a scooter but don’t knock fun. Scooters are fun. And for running around in town I have no complaints at all.

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Tags: scooters

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 9th, 2010 at 4:14 pm and is filed under Scooter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.