06-06-2011, 07:28 PM
I owned a 49cc Honda scooter in college (upstate/Finger Lakes NY) and loved it. It had a top speed of 30mph and I somehow put two thousand miles on it in a little over two years. It was a 2-stroke, oil-injected, electric start engine and got about 80mpg. Aside from collision repair the only maintenance was some kind of exhaust system cleanout after 1500 miles; this cost $100 at the time and made a big difference but was probably something I could have done myself.
Despite being a pretty careful driver I had two accidents that only through the grace of a higher being did not injure me seriously. One involved falling down at top speed while trying to brake in a driving rainstorm, sliding hundreds of feet downhill on wet pavement while wearing full raingear. This did nothing to me but broke a mirror and a light lens, scratched some trim, and bent the front wheel of the scooter.
The other involved flying off the bike when my attention drifted for a few seconds in ideal conditions on a perfectly sunny day. I wiped out trying to avoid backending a truck that stopped in the road; I think I hit the post of a street sign on the side of the road, went over the handlebars, and did a sliding face plant through the gravel and road schmutz in the shoulder. Had I not been wearing a helmet *with a face shield* I would probably be blind right now, or noseless.
I also seem to recall falling off the thing going half a mile an hour while stopping on some gravel that had accumulated on the side of the road. I had to pick a lot of grit out of my palms but I'm chalking up things that happen at less than five miles an hour as a miscellaneous occupational hazard; had I walked two thousand miles instead of scootering that distance, no doubt I would have tripped and fallen over my own feet somewhere along the line too.
I drove it a TON in snow too, but never had a problem.
Of course it is totally wimpy by motorcycle standards but it was a fun thing to ride, easy to park, inexpensive, and very practical. Every time I think about how much fun I had on it I also realize that I was very lucky to have not been dumber myself, and to have not encountered somebody else being dumb.
Despite being a pretty careful driver I had two accidents that only through the grace of a higher being did not injure me seriously. One involved falling down at top speed while trying to brake in a driving rainstorm, sliding hundreds of feet downhill on wet pavement while wearing full raingear. This did nothing to me but broke a mirror and a light lens, scratched some trim, and bent the front wheel of the scooter.
The other involved flying off the bike when my attention drifted for a few seconds in ideal conditions on a perfectly sunny day. I wiped out trying to avoid backending a truck that stopped in the road; I think I hit the post of a street sign on the side of the road, went over the handlebars, and did a sliding face plant through the gravel and road schmutz in the shoulder. Had I not been wearing a helmet *with a face shield* I would probably be blind right now, or noseless.
I also seem to recall falling off the thing going half a mile an hour while stopping on some gravel that had accumulated on the side of the road. I had to pick a lot of grit out of my palms but I'm chalking up things that happen at less than five miles an hour as a miscellaneous occupational hazard; had I walked two thousand miles instead of scootering that distance, no doubt I would have tripped and fallen over my own feet somewhere along the line too.
I drove it a TON in snow too, but never had a problem.
Of course it is totally wimpy by motorcycle standards but it was a fun thing to ride, easy to park, inexpensive, and very practical. Every time I think about how much fun I had on it I also realize that I was very lucky to have not been dumber myself, and to have not encountered somebody else being dumb.