i'm pretty excited. she's been at the scooter lounge for a while, so it's good to have her back :)

i really like the lines of the vespa/stella/bajaj scooters. they're clean and uninterrupted by cables. unfortunately these cables have to go somewhere to get from the handlebars to the engine where they'll actually do some good. that means they've gotta go through the frame. this can make replacing the cables a bit of a pain...

when i was in seattle last summer i had to do an emergency cable housing repair. luckily, my amazing scooter mechanic Dave had some great advice on how to pull the new housing through the frame. it's actually quite slick:

apparently barber brothers, our local mitsubishi dealer cum "vespa boutique" is giving away free 50cc vespas with the purchase of a new mitsubishi...

just what we need. a bunch of idiots riding around who didn't really want a scooter but took one anyway because "hey, free vespa!"

at least it means the scooter lounge will get more business changing oil for a lot of clueless vespa owners.

a while back i mentioned my buddy's amazing new tank scooter, and the worthless warranty it comes with...

check out what i noticed today :)

i'm working on a writeup on how to prepare for a scooter road trip. until then, here are a couple of thoughts from my trip to logan and back last weekend:

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the hydration packs don't really mean it when they say not to put soda in them. it worked just fine for me. :-)

my fuel reserve works again! you have to idea how cool this is. i've run out of gas far too many times... i don't really like pushing my scooter to a gas station. it looks like i have about 25 miles of gas left after switching over to reserve.

sardine canyon wasn't quite as cold as last time. no complaints here. in fact there were times when it was downright warm for three in the morning. of course this was offset by the looming rainclouds and the occasional threatening sprinkles.

my stella scooter goes downhill just as fast at 1/3 throttle as wide open. i realized riding down sardine canyon that my scooter would go about the same speed downhill whether i had the throttle pegged, or i just gave it enough to maintain speed.

cache valley smells like poo. it's the truth.

having a properly tuned scooter makes a big difference. i know i've been running rich, but i just bought a set of boyesen power reeds for my stella, and i didn't want to adjust the jetting twice. so i rode to logan rich, and it made a huge difference. my top end suffered, i'm sure my gas mileage suffered. my spark plug was a bit ugly when i got there...

there are a lot of people who want to buy my scooter. for about 500 bucks. no thanks. i ran into another one at the logan walmart while i was investing in the mountain dew lifeline featured above...

i love the alpine loop. i took a nice two hour scooter ride with sam and thomas, and with a cute gal on the back. it's been a great fourth of july.

i think the alpine loop is my favorite ride in the Provo Utah area. at just over an hour, it's long enough to be a good ride, but not so long that it gets monotonous.

it's quite a bit of fun. it's wooded so most of the ride is in the shade. it's beautiful, especially in the afternoon when the sun is shining through the trees. the roads are all twisty and fun, and there isn't much traffic to deal with. at times it's a bit steep, but riding two-up on a 150cc, i was able to handle it okay.

one of these days i'm going to organize a scooter camping trip, and there's a good chance we'll end up there.

but for now, off to a barbecue and the watching of the fireworks.

last week I wrote a bit about the Tank scooter that a friend bought for cheap... you've gotta check out the owners manual excerpts he posted on his blog. they're fantastic.

I recently purchased a new scooter. It’s a Tank, which anyone who knows about scooters will tell you is the best top-off-the-line scooter you can buy. They’re also the most expensive. Think of Tank as the Cadillac of scooters.

I got mine for $250.

my favorite?