Tag Archives: Vespa

4/11/2009 — This morning I got a fantastic invitation from two scooter buddies for a trip to Como Zoo in St. Paul and some grilln’ goodness. We set off from their place in the Linden Hills area down Minnehaha Parkway, then across the Mississippi River on the Ford Parkway bridge. The weather was positively gorgeous. Blue, sunny skies and temperatures in the upper 50s. We made our way, the three of us, up Snelling and Lexington amid relatively light traffic. I …

4/10/2009 — Sometimes a ride doesn’t go the way you plan. Sometimes a ride doesn’t go at all. The day before, I’d replaced the tire valve cores on both my front and rear tire. It seemed prudent advice from the community at Modern Vespa. My main concern was the rear tire, as that had been my issue the previous week. After pulling the cores and refilling the tire, everything seemed fine and I rode home. …

4/9/2009 — Thursday’s ride began with disappointment. Even with my buzzer switch installed, my starting issue persists. No time to fix it though, I had places to go and people to meet. I rode familiar roads to western Bloomington to meet with a professional staffing agency about some job possibilities. Having mapped the route beforehand, I found an easy, low traffic street that looked like it ought to get me where I needed to go. The street I needed was right off …

4/7/2009 — Today’s ride began with a revelation. This whole season I’ve been fussing with a starting issue. My theory was that there weren’t enough cranking amps to properly engage the starter solenoid — so upon hitting the starter button, the starter motor would just spin freely and not engage the flywheel. Since my battery was properly tended all winter, that left the turn indicator buzzer I’d added in the off season. So as an experiment, I disconnected the buzzer fuse to …

4/3/2009 — Ride agenda for today: errands. I had to do paperwork at The Creative Group and wanted to browse the MacBook Pro at Ridgedale in Minnetonka. Also insurance info to the credit union and groceries from Aldi in Minnetonka. Then an exploratory journey to Eagan ’round our new apartment to experience the hwy 77 bridge on my Vespa as a possible commuting route.

I headed out to Minnetonka just after noon to fill out 2009 paperwork for doing contracting work with The Creative …

3/26/2009 — On this cloudy early spring day, I was kindly invited by fellow scooterist Kent Aldrich to attend a hands-on demonstration of what he does in his letterpress shop, The Nomadic Press.

Weather forecast showed that the afternoon would warm up to upper 30s with only a 10% chance of precipitation. That turned out to be a load of rubbish. Trip out was uneventful, if ominous. I was comfortable and warm enough while riding with the exception my pointer and …

Yesterday I un-mothballed both my Vespa GT 200L and the Mrs’ Buddy 125 for a kickoff run after petrol and compressed air. Glorious! The weather was just the cool side of perfect and surprisingly the roads are virtually free of sand and grit here in our part of the Twin Cities. I was apprehensive at first, having been three months out of the saddle for winter, but soon the feel and rhythm of riding my gorgeous little italian beast came …

Originally posted August 26th, 2008. Updated September 30, 2009.

People keep asking me about scooters. I’m hoping that they’re drawn to the practicality and fun of it as well as the economics, but I know better. Gas has been expensive this summer. But that’s a perfectly great reason to get into scooting.

So I thought a primer was in order. My obsessive researching tendencies and ongoing work to be a wealth of all semi-useless knowledge can now benefit YOU! So let’s get into the meat of it and answer the basic question of what is a scooter?