Our old friend Errol from Toronto sent me a link to the Twisted Wheel Scooter Club’s recent rally video. The Club has been a staple of the Toronto scooter scene for the past few years. For those who have never visisted our Canadian friends, the video shows a ride into the countyside and proves that they really do have a summer season. The club events are documented in the video along with a gaggle of scooters (+150?). My only question is “where are the vintage scooters?”. Maybe in Toronto they prefer reliability over nostalga.
On the heels of deciding we would move to Northern Virginia I have been flooded with reconsidering a whole series of decisions including canceling plans to get to Amerivespa 2009. I am hoping that next year I will be settled and can make the trip to where ever it is been held.
Several friends have asked “how are you going to get all your scooter toys to Washington DC?” So far no one has taken the next step to say, “I can take care of a few scoots if you aren’t going to have room”
At the moment I am not worring about that. ScootRichmond is working on my Ducati moped and my 180ss. Since a 1965 Ducati replacement stator is non-existant, Dave is doing his magic modifying the electrical system. I have had to go back to Henry Hogben, in Canada for a new cylinder/piston since the little bug was only pushing 50lbs on a compression test. I have been wishing that I could watch over Dave’s shoulder as he brings the little sucker to life. But for the next few weeks I still have a regular job.
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 past week from Graham, talking about how he and a friend were streaming mopedand scooter racing on the on the internet. Anything with a tech bent always catches my eye so I started to look into what they were doing. They were using Mogulus a very reliable video streaming and archiving service that adds chat to the stream. It is one of the streaming platforms, like Stickam that seems to always get good reviews. But when I saw the high qualify moped racing video that Graham and Harold had put up on Vimeo, I was convinced. I needed to talk with these guys.
There are a few die-hard moped riders here in Richmond and even though I have a 50cc bike myself, I have always thought of them as under powered. The PoliniUSA Cup races feature mopeds and other bikes including scooters that have been modified, mostly with Polini aftermarket parts. These things scream! Listen to the podcast with Harold, then look for the streaming video at mopedracing or poliniusa the first weekend of each month starting in May. Don’t miss the kitted pocket bike races featuring little spitfires packing 4bhp. They do the knee-sliding like the superbikes do.
On the heels of deciding we would move to Northern Virginia I have been flooded with reconsidering a whole series of decisions including canceling plans to get to Amerivespa 2009. I am hoping that next year I will be settled and can make the trip to where ever it is been held.
At the moment I am not worring about that. 
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e8ac0f7b-db74-414d-8564-e8ef8a434ccd "photo")
