If I were Catholic I would be saying, “forgive me father, it has been four weeks since my last post”. For those of you waiting for the disparaging words of self loathing and apologies, forget it. The fact is, I have a busy life and the best I have been able to do is store up the scraps of notes I have been making in anticipation of a soon to come barrage of insights, reflections and clever anecdotal scooter stories. All I can say is you’ll have to be the judge of that.

One point of interest in my life has been the travel I have been doing over the past few months. I have been out to Denver, where on my way to check out the new Ducati Streetfighter I stumbled upon a basement motorcycle museum that contains almost every vintage Italian motor bike I have ever lusted after. While driving down Market Street I caught a glimpse of a 90cc MV Agusta out of the corner of my eye. Since Market Street is one way, I circled back around the block and pulled up beside a fully restored masterpiece. Next to the bike sat a small sign pointing to a basement entrance of a warehouse that is Vintage Motos It houses hundreds of original and restored motorcycles, including Ducati, Giliera, Italjet, Motoguzzi, Parillia bikes and more. Most are under 250cc. What makes this such a find is that in order to do a quality restoration, one the best reference points is having access to an original specimen and at Vintage Moto, they have one of just about every 50s or 60s Italian bike imported. They even have a few rare scooters, like the 1956 Rumi Formuchino (Little Ant).

So here’s my returning gift to you, a new place to check when trying to source parts or a place to go to get a first hand view of what a real Italian import survivor look like. For a small fee, you can ogle, touch (if you talk nice to the owner), speak Vintage Italian and take lots of detailed pictures. Check out all my pictures from the museum  HERE.

Stay tuned for a new podcast and a recap of my recent visit to Seattle and a return to my roots in the Pacific Northwest.

 

 Episode 94 - SCOOTERCAST: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Back in April I was following a few of my peeps on twitter when someone posted a tweet about a group of three musicians who were putting together a west coast tour called The Vespa Experiment with sponsorship from Vespa USA. As an extension of the “Go Green” campaign Vespa was providing three musicians with scooters and they were planning a ride from LA to San Francisco with stops along the way to play small venues. Usually these marketing things don’ t really catch my eye, but I became more interested when I began to look into the back story and found out that Jason Reeves, one of the singer song writers, had started his career in Iowa City Iowa and had become one of Myspace’s most successful artists. To date his songs have gotten more than 6 million plays. Those are big numbers on or off the Internet.

I became even more curious, when I read Brian’s post over at 2strokebuzz, where he rightful railed about the miss-perception that scooters can make a significant impact on our environmental problems (bring on the hate mail).

I hope you will take a minute and listen to what Jason has to say about all this and make your own judgement about the Vespa marketing machine. I found Jason to be unpretentious and surprisingly reserved. It reminded me of what most of us were like when we first got into scooting. I say it’s all about enjoy the ride. It doesn’t need to really be any more complicated than that. With all the strong personalities in scooting, it’s nice to talk with someone who is low key and far from fanatic about things. Jason is new to scooting, but hopefully the scooter bug will stick with him long after he does 450 miles on a Vespa GTS.

I would like to thank Jason for taking time out of the tour to speak with me and also thank TJ at Warner Brother Records for helping put the interview together.

I got an email this week from Imiuswi Aborigine pointing me to the March 2009 Flock Yeah rally. The event was put on by the LA Latebirds Moped Club along with help from the  Choke Motorcycle Shop. The following video of the rally is done by LAEdge. Nicely done mi amici!

 

 SCOOTERCAST Episode 90 [23:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The last couple of weeks I have been ignoring my blogging and podcasting responsibilities. Sorry. I was sick most of the week after returning from Denver and haven’t gotten back in the groove until this week. This hasn’t stopped me from scooting a bit during the brief warm weather hits that are popping up every few days. The 7 Hills Scooter Club had a delayed ride a few weeks ago after the first Sunday ride of March was rained. Although everything in the garage is running, I was a bit lazy not wanting to risk a break down, so I took the Vespa GTS out.

My favorite scooterist, Alex from Peace Scooter has posted a video on her site she is calling a minumentary. It a mini-documentary that chronicles her two years of scooting for peace. It occurred to me this week that Alex didn’t have one of today’s great social connectors when she was riding. I am talking about Twitter. Loved by some and hated by many, Twitter is an amazing tool for connecting. I use it myself, mostly when I travel. Right now there is a guy called the Twitchhiker who in just a few weeks has traveled from New Castle in England to New Zealand San Fransisco by using twitter to connect with people who help him get from one place to another. You can see all the details of his trip on his website.

I got tagged as one of the top five scooter blogs on the Go Motor Scooter website. I am not really sure this has any credibility to it, as I tend to think that reader and podcast listeners’ feedback is most valuable. It may be a bit pedantic, but shouldn’t we really be talking about the real powerhouse scooter blogs like 2-stroke buzz, Scootin Old Skool , The Scooter Scoop and Scooter in the Sticks. I have always thought of them as having an editorial credibility and an authority that I can only aspire to. But my thanks goes out to Paul, who does the site. Any link love is appreciated.

I want to comment on a post over on 2-stroke buzz, where the blog posts are usually to the factual with minnimal editorializing. But in this case a bit of editorial license was just what the scooter doctor ordered when it came to talking about Steve Guzmans’ departure from Carter Brothers and SYM. The post makes several very good points about how the power-sports industry not seem to understanding the scooter lifestyle. We are very accepting of almost anyone who comes into the community with an honest interest in scootering. One of the problems, not that I profess to know anything about Steve’s situation with SYM, but when a short-term perspective motivates what you do, you can expect the deal to go south pretty fast. Thanks to 2-stroke buzz for speaking up and we wish Steve the best in keeping up the Scooter Scoop Blog and anything else he jumps into. He is an honest, straight-up kind of guy.

Scooter Website Link
All Styles Scooters – A ton of information, including brochures,repair manuals, owners manuals, schematics and much more from a scooter parts site out of England. Focus is mostly on Vespa and Lambretta, but not just vintage bikes. They have instructions on making racing modification including barrel tuning, intakes and plenty more. The tech page seems to compliment all the parts options they offer, the kind of thing that could really get someone like me in trouble.

Music For this show

Dance Hall Night from Jonny Barber, an old friend of Chuck Hughes another Denver Rock-A-Billy star and also known as the Velvet Elvis. Jonny has played with numerous and is associated with the Rock-A-Billy Record Co. label. I love this music, but to get the full experience you have to see it live. Jonny is constantly on the road so make sure you check his website to catch a live show.
Mashuptown has endless remixes of known and unknown music. Six Songs Collide played on this show mashes: Jason Mraz, Howie Day, Five For Fighting, Angela Ammons, Boyzone and 3 Doors Down.