SHOWNOTES: Thanks to Ben over at Honky Tonk Dragon for his post acknowledging the mild stone, one year of podcasting and web posts. I won’t spend a lot of time this week talking about all that, but rather will save it for next week. Steve Guzman from the Scooter Scoop, sounds over the moon about his new job with Italjet. It also seems that the rush of preparing for an upcoming Indianapolis Dealer Expo next month, makes it tough to track him down for a full length interview. He has assured me that we will talk and at that point we’ll hear a whole lot more about what the LS Motorsports and Diamo. He reports that there are big plans for getting strong Diamo products out to the public and that he has been to the new warehouse to see for himself that this is not just another promise. Steve has always a wealth of information and is honest about what he considers to be good product and also things that are crap. Stay tuned.
It has been hard to keep up with all the news and emails this past week. It wouldn’t be nearly as tough if I didn’t have a job, but then again I like my job. The month of January is always a non-stop marathon for me. Here in Virginia, it the time the legislature is in session and does it’s work. You could say I am a community organizer, but what that really means is I help other people, usually the poor, the disabled, those without health care and the homeless, make themselves known to politicians and the powerful. Like most of you, I have my own escapes and one of those rejuvenating activities is scooting, but since bragging last week about our balmy weather, the weather gods have struck back with a vengeance. When ever I hear the word vengeance I can help but think of my favorite move, Pulp Fiction and Samuel L Jackson saying “and I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance” just before he kills someone.

I have done a little investigating into the problems I am having with my Vespa Sprint and will need to deliver it to Scoot Richmond for some serious repair. The kick start won’t engage and if I try to push start it, it freezes up. Of course I am not looking forward to the diagnosis, but it started me thinking about all the possible performance mods I might be able to make to it. So in the spirit of spring riding I have been careening through the on line catalogs for performance kits and dreaming of breaking the 45 mile an hour speed barrier of my little Asian girl. Yes, I did get this bike over the Internet a number of years ago, from Randal at Scootrs in Vietnam, but thats is a story for another time. (Please don’t ban me from the forums)

In an effort to dream a little spring into my life I decided to go out to the Richmond International Raceway to a motorcycle show, thinking, maybe they will have a few scooters, just for fun. The quick story is, of course there were no scoots, even at the booth that had a big vinyl sign saying Scooter Works (I wondered if that was trademark infringement). Despite some beautiful machines, most were over the top hard tail frames with ungodly amounts of horsepower stick in them. One of the most incredible ones was by Boss Hoss Cycles, a production bike the size of a large Harley with a 6 liter LS2 Corvette power plant.

I am looking forward to some under 250 cc scooting as soon as the weather warms up.

Scooter Blog Post and News

Skootin Old Skool’s post about the Stella Scooter in Seattle
Two Stroke Buzz also posts links to a dealer taking shipment of the new Stella
Highrollers Weekend rally in Vegas, another reminder it is coming up in February

Music for this show is from the Podsafe Music Network

Cadillac Woman by Freightrain Jones
Telling on Trixie with Dumb Boy
Peeper Radio with Holmes in 60 seconds
The Moots with Just Let me Know

 

 Episode 45 [27:37m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

SHOWNOTES: There has been a big development in the scooter blogging world. Many of you may know that one of the best scooter blogs for news and information is Steve Guzman’s The Scooter Scoop. He always puts up top quality blog posts, lots of outstanding pictures, done with a fantastic sense of humor, both about scooting and about those of us who sometimes take our selves to seriously. In a post on Thursday January 10^th, 2008 Steve announced that as if that moment he was “the official point of contact for Italjet USA” he went on to say that “LS Motorsports has brought me on board to manage all aspects of Italjet Sales and Marketing.” which is probably a good things, in that when I looked at the LS site for news, the last post was September 8, 2007. Read the rest of this entry →

 

 Episode 44 [29:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

SHOWNOTES: For those of you who have been watching you can probably tell, I have been tinkering around with the format of the website this past week. That should explain why it has been changing, sometimes, minute to minute. I guess there is a way to do all this off line then update the site, but I haven’t figured out how to do it that way yet. When I first built the site I set it up to work best in a Firefox browser, the one that I migrated to several years ago. The site seemed to display fine in the Mac Safari browser, but did funny things in Internet Explorer, like throw the sidebar lists to the bottom of the page. Hopefully those of you using Explorer will find this has been fixed and I must say if you have never seen the Firefox browser take a look at it. It is free and seems to run the site beautifully. Read the rest of this entry →

 

 Episode 42 [30:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

SHOWNOTES: I have to say that it was sad to leave Denver last week, but some what of a relief to get back to Richmond. The weather has turned cold here, well for those of you who live up north I should say it has gotten cooler here. Despite this, I was so excited with the White Roof Radio plug I ran outside, pulled out my my scooter and snaps a boat load of pictures of my Vespa and Mini-cooper. When I looked at them later in preparation to posting them on the blog I was impressed with what a natural pair they make. Both are small, efficient modes of transportation, with a built-in fun factor that is out of this world. Just to draw a clearer comparison, the mini gives you that wild adolescent feeling of driving your friend’s go cart around the neighborhood at top speed, hoping your parents never found out that you were in the street. It is unnerving how in a Cooper S, which is the supercharged mini, you can go from 35 to seventy before you know it. I have the same experience riding my scooters. Although they top out well below seventy, when I am riding the winding roads around the James river, 35 feels like seventy and with every turn the smile on my face gets bigger and bigger. If you haven’t already, go over to the website and check out the mini post and the show notes. For those of you who are also fans of all things small and quick I will put a link to mini’s latest creation. It is called the Mini Clubman, a longer, wagon type mini with the same built in fun factor. It’s not due out until next year, but the web has lots of leaked and “official” Here is a link to the Mini Cooper Clubman info.

Scooter news and blog posts

• Big Guy Small Scooter Rides the countryside around Vancouver, BC
• Unlike some of us, prepare yourself to ride year round by Scooter Dru
• Steve writes about the Austin Rally on The Scooter Scoop
• Long distance pick up and a new scooter from Idaho by Classic Scooter Collector
• Steve Williams writes about fall riding in Pennsylvania
• How about a Vespa with that Condo purchase?
• Check out the new Aurora Scooterist Club

Music for this show is from the Podsafe Music Network
The Clintons with Freeride in a Cop Car
The Verticals with Stop that Building
Geoff Smith with Set the Music Free (a podsafe music anthem)

 

 Episode 37 [24:24m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download