SHOW NOTES: Spring continues to blossom here in Richmond and that means both warm and cold days. I feel sorry for our friends up north who by this time must be praying for spring to come. It seems like scooters are coming out of the woodwork around here and I have been able to ride several time this week without having to bundle up of worry about the weather. Despite all this, Marcel and I will be heading south this week to spend a few days in Key West Florida taking in the sun and generally lounging around. As I understand it, scooting is a way of life in Key West This is the first time I have taken a vacation in months and when we get back, I have Pod camp New York to look forward to. Unfortunately, the pod camp is the same weekend as the Dogwood Delirium here in Central Virginia. So, once again I will have to settle for hearing about all the over eating and drinking along with the usual general mayhem and embarrassing moments from other club members. If you happen to be in Central Virginia and weekend of April 25th consider joining the 7hills gang.
Most of you know that my Vespa Sprint has a new engine in it. What I haven’t talked about is how this has left me with a bunch of spare parts. I happen to be one of those people who rarely throws anything away. As I laid everything out and looked at the blown crank bearing again I notice that almost everything else was in pretty good shape. Dave the mechanic had shown me some damage on the inside of the engine case, but for the most part, everything else was OK, the clutch assembly, the cylinder head, the gear changer and a whole lot more.
It has been a long time since I have bought and sold on Ebay. For a while I was very active trading spare BMW parts, old computer components and other electronics. I think that the experience has changed a lot over the years. It use to be that buy on Ebay was like trading with your next door neighbor. Now you never know who you are dealing with and as I understand it, there are fewer auctions taking place and more fix price items than ever before. Hopefully all the Ebay scooterist will find my spares interesting and I expect the bidders will be like most of the rest of the scooter community, honest.

Scooter Blog Posts

• 2strokebuzz – “Have it your way” with Honda?
• Who Rides A Vespa – Vespa Canada launched the Vespa-head campaign
• Vespadition gets news paper article – Matua starts his trip in CA

Music for this show is from the Podsafe Music Network

• Ready to Go by Ben Cooper
• Empty streets by the The Gentleman Callers

 

 Episode 56 [23:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

SHOWNOTES: I am planning some changes on the website and want to know what you think about the idea. Last week when I put up the link to Vespadition, I noticed that several of the posts that included links to Peter Moore and Christian Bauer’s websites had fallen off the front page of the website. One way of fixing this is to increase the number of posts that appear here, but then the page gets to be very long and who wants to have to scroll and scroll just to find a link. So I have been considering changing up the format of the site and plan to keep a picture link to my most recent guests right at the top of the page.
Another website issue that plagues podcasters is the question of monetization. For the common folk, this mean “how do you make money to defray the cost of bandwidth.” But before I head off in this or any other direction, I want to know what you think. Are you interested in this kind of this stuff, you know sctrcst t-shirts, buttons and other good SCTRCST crap. I would hate to do anything to make you, my audience, feel like I was just pimping for pennies.
On a completely different subject, I picked up my 1966 Vespa Sprint at ScootRichmond. It has a clean, shinny, new LML 150cc engine and I got my break-in instructions from Dave the mechanic, which synthesize down to “don’t ride it like you usually ride it”. This translated into keeping it under 60 kph, that’s 37.28 mph for those of you keeping track. Coming home I could feel the difference in power and responsiveness and can’t wait until it is broken in, should be about 300 k according to Dave. Apparently he installs a larger main jet to keep people like me from over doing it in the beginning and after break in, changes the oil and swaps out the jet so it will accelerate as it suppose to. This is probably a good safety measure for me to have, I do like to go fast.
Maybe like you, I listen to lots of podcasts, especially those that have to do with tech. One of those is called net@nite, hosted by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur. Leo is a longtime tech broadcaster who teams up with all kinds of people to produce podcasts and in this case he is working with an entertaining fresh face from Toronto. This past week, they talked about a website named Animoto. It is an on-line application that automatically generates a professionally produced video. There are really only three steps to the process. 1) Select your images and download them to the site, 2) choose your music, and 3) finalize some details as to how you want your video to look. You can produce the 30 sec clips for free, but I recommend signing up for $30 per year which gives you unlimited access to longer produce videos. If you want to see what a short clip looks like, checkout the one below.

Blogs Posts

• 2 strokebuzz – Josh from Scoot Mag and the silent auction to help him out
• MBI Awards – Mostly about motorcycles except MP3
• Vespadition – Changing his route

Music for this show is from the Podsafe Music Network

• Cant Help Myself by Kyoshi
• Dumb by 21 Against
• Podcast Sell-Out by Smart Bomb Radio

 

 Episode 54 [24:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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

SHOWNOTES: I have been very busy at work, but more to the point, I have had one of those weeks where I ask myself, do these people really think I am that smart? You know what I mean, that little nagging voice that you have in the back of your head that says, “if everyone knew how really stupid I was I would be fired on the spot.” I do know that this is my own little nagging insecurities, but indulge me for a minute. After much heartache I have learned that this is a useful little quirk to have, because it keeps me honest, both with myself and with others and also has helped me from getting to far out on a limb numerous times. What the hell does this have to do with scooters? It is related to the idea of making more scooter connections so you don’t get out there and on the web it means getting into groups and forums. Most of groups I know about are through Yahoo Groups. This has got to be one of the easiest ways to communicate with like minded fans and to establish a place where people can ask questions, share information and exchange ideas. Some that I still follow are about disabilities rights, politics and other things more material like McIntosh Stereo equipment, Mini Coopers, Ducati, Harley Davidson Sprint motorcycles and of course Scooters. Some groups are large (thousands of members), but most are small to medium sized (hundreds of members).and each has what I would term its own distinct personality. In addition to the Yahoo Groups, the other place to connect is through the online forums. In my view, the forums provide an avenue to both connect with other scooterist and in most cases, get some of the best free advise in all the scooter community. Many of the scooter forums, like the Internationalist BBS, which has been around for ten years, have more resources on riding, mechanics, clubs and rallies than you are going to find if you do something like google search. And most times, the information is more current accurate and reliable. As one example, the modern Vespa forum includes a section with all the modern Vespa parts and workshop manuals, with a separate section for repairs and technical tips. Now that is a resource!

Scooter Groups and Forums

2StrokeSmoke Group
Bajaj Scooter Group
Chinese Scooter Group 
Cushman Group 
Genuine Buddy Group
Honda Metropolitian Scooter Forum
Honda Reflex Owners Group
Honda Silverwings Group/
Intenational Scooterist BBS Forum
Maxi-scooters Group
Modern Vespa Forum
Scooter Forum in England
Scooter Forum in Germany
Stella Scooter Group
Suzuki Burgman Group
TwistnGoScoot Group
Two Stroke Smoke (a kinder gentler group than the other)
Vespa Smallframes Group
Vespinoy Forum in the Philipines
Yamaha Vino 125 Group
Yamaha Zuma Group

Music for this show is from the Podsafe Music Network

The Clintons with Fan of the Bean
Lesismore with Sweetest Heart
The Aggrolites with Funky Fire

 

 Episode 39 [30:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download