My sincere apology with the lapse in posting. I was so disconnected this past week while in Key West, I am still trying to catchup with everything that happened while I was gone. Although I missed getting a podcast out, I have been working on an interview I did a while back with Iggy Granger, author, scooter tester and an original English mod. Iggy has just published a book on the Scooter Lifestyle. It is a journey of discovery through the scooter scene in England. I will have the interview in this week’s show, along with more scooter information and talk about Key West. Check back shortly for more to come and thanks for hanging in there.

Shownotes : I don’t know what more I can ask for, it was almost seventy degrees here today. Having worked so much in January, I had a nice afternoon of riding planned. But as you might expect, work again, interfered with recreation and I spent the afternoon at the Virginia legislature, listening to the big wigs argue about money. But then again, such is the business of the people and I did sign on to this gig.
What had really gotten me hyped up, was another beautiful Virginia weekend. It was in the sixties and just right for wrenching a bit on my scooters and spending part of Sunday riding out in the country. You may not remember, but I live in Richmond, a small city hoping to fool everyone else into thinking it is a big city. The truth is, we operate like any other small town in America. Plenty of hopes and dreams mixed up with lots of southern tradition, small town political bickering and easy access to some of the most beautiful countryside in the United States.
So yesterday morning I took off and road out old highway six, past the McMansions, horse farms and an occasional civil war plantation house. As usual my little sidecar Vespa hummed along catching glanced from all kinds of city and country folks. Probably like you I always get the thumbs up and the smiling wave, but yesterday I had something altogether new happen. I mentioned that I took off in the morning, but what I didn’t say was that I had skipped my usual bowl of Honey-nut Cheerios, oh yes they are a heart health breakfast. I took the New York times along with me planning to stop for a late morning breakfast. Now I am a rather solitary guy and when I do this I also take my Ipod and sit quietly at the local diner eating, reading and catching up on podcasts. Much to my surprise, a guy comes up and asks, “are you riding the Vespa?” When I say yes, he says that he saw me about two miles up the road, turned around and told his wife he had to talk with me. Come to find out, he too has a Vespa P200 along with a new GT and lived just down the road. But that was a first, he actually tracked me down to talk with me about my or his scoot. I was even able to give him a lead on a Vespa sidecar that has shown up here in Richmond.
In other news, I finally took the plunge and joined the Motorcycle Bloggers International (MBI) For those of you who aren’t familiar with this group, it is an association of bloggers who write about riding all kinds of two wheeled vehicles. I have watched this site for over a year and was impressed when Steve Williams at Scooter in the Sticks won last year’s “blogger of the year” award. It was then I decided I had to have him on the show. MBI has all the big guns in our blogging world as members, which is why I never thought I really belonged in that group. Maybe there is something about having survived for a full year that has given me a little more courage, but I said, sure why not and since they didn’t reject me. Make sure you go over and check out some of the other bloggers. They are a classy bunch of guys and girls. I hope I can live up to all the self imposed expectations.

Scooter Blog Post and News

• One of my heroes, too cool, Lou Reed did an ad for Honda Scooters, What was he thinking?
• Scooterplace has pictures of unusual and old scooters in their natural environment.
• Check out the upcoming German based Custom Scooter Show.
• Piaggio-Vespa is set for a comeback in India.
• Look at Honky-Tonky Dragon website, just because Ben is so damn good at posting interesting stuff.

Music for this show is from the Podsafe Music Network

• Birds by ENRi
• From Me To You by Jeriko
• Holmes in 30 Seconds – The Six Napoleons Peeper Radio Theatre
• Be My Friend by Geoff Smith

 

 Episode 47 [26:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I know this is a bit of geek-related old news, but for those of you who missed it, here is the video I mentioned on SCTRCST Episode 43 with Cali Lewis from Geekbrief TV and Geoff Smith’s song “Digg the Code”. On May 1, 2007 an article appeared on Digg’s homepage that contained the encryption key for the AACS digital rights management protection of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Then Digg, “acting on the advice of its lawyers”, removed posting submissions about the secret number from its database and banned several users for submitting it. The removals were seen by many Digg users as a capitulation to corporate interests and an assault on free speech.

SHOWNOTES: Just a quick reminder, I now have a voice mail number you can call from your phone 206-888-6174. It is listed at the top of the web page and should scroll in the podcast title for those of you using an ipod.

The POR-15 product for reconditioning my 180ss tank came this week. Take my suggestion and just order it from the company website, it was here in three days. If you are planning this project, make sure you have time to complete the whole thing, that way there is less likelihood of any flash rusting, before you can get the tank coated. Just so you know, you will not find that everyone agrees with coating a tank. I think this comes from using inferior product and having the tank lining deteriorate over time.

There is an interesting blog post over on Modvespa.com taking about the restoration of an NSU scooter. NSU is from Germany and this on has been on the scoot.net website before. It is a 1956 Prima D and I’ll have links to both the ModVespa blog post and the original post at scoot.net. This is the kind of European scooter you don’t see over in the US very often.

Vespa has started pushing hard on their “Go Green” campaign The have put up another flashy website encouraging us all to make videos praising the Vespa as a tree hugger’s dream. At the moment there are only a few short clips, but given that they are offering to give away a couple of scooters for the best ones, I’m sure they will start flooding in. There will be a link in the show notes to the Go Green Vespa Video Challenge.

MUSIC Podsafe Music Network, Gatlinburg by Quarter Drawn Band, PJ Style Blues and Gasoline by Justin Gordon

 

 Episode 26: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download