TheScooterScoop

From St. Paul Pioneer Press 4/24/2005

JOE SOUCHERAY

To celebrate Earth Day, I went with a buddy in his big new GMC Yukon Denali to help him get his new scooter, which fit in the back the way a deck of cards fits in the glove box. That was sending a man’s truck to a get a boy’s vehicle, but nevertheless, he was joining the scooter community.

People who get scooters, or want to, or are about to, are starting to sound like deer hunters. “You get your scooter yet?”

Mind you, I am talking about gasoline engine scooters, not those electric jobs. In the 1950s, they were Vespas, and the people who drove them were oddball poets or beatniks or students with a flair for the avant-garde. Either that, or they were fledging motor-heads who got the shakes just reading the Sears (Allstate) and Wards (Riverside) catalogs. In any case, gas prices weren’t the problem. Gas was about 15 cents a gallon.

Today all the major Japanese motorcycle manufacturers make scooters, and the Italians are still in business, and new scooter brands are popping up all the time. I guess you could say the desire to own one is driven by gas prices, especially this spring when there is a run on the dealerships. Give or take they are all in the 50 to 70 mile per gallon range, and I’d love to say that I drive a scooter because of gas prices or because I am sensitive to the way evil Americans voraciously use up the earth’s resources, but I wouldn’t be kidding anybody.

Scooters are fun. They turn errands into adventures. It’s that simple. Most of them have under-seat storage so when the CP tells you to go to the store and get some carrots and a carton of milk, no problem. Off you go with a secret route all your own and pull up to the supermarket where …

“Do you like your scooter?”

She was in her late 30s, not that hard on the eyes, but I could practically see the darker circle on her denim jacket where she had pinned her Kerry button. I fully expected to be scolded for something, maybe the fact that I was parking at the curb right in front of the store.

“I do,” I said.

“We love ours,” she said, “my husband and I.”

Ah, relief, a kindred spirit. She told me what she and her husband had, and I explained to her why I had what I had, and all in all it was a delightful exchange.

In fact, my first scooter was the same little Honda that she and her husband were driving. I brought that home in May of 2002, but unannounced. Back then I tried the lamest of all possible excuses — I was working under the man’s rule that it is easier to ask forgiveness than seek permission — by suggesting that I bought it for her.

“Are you nuts?”

That didn’t work too well. Even as those precious to the CP took a great liking to the little scooter, she was true to a kind of ethnic stubbornness and never once even sat on it.

Last year that little Honda went to Mr. Unbelievable, and I upgraded to a slightly larger model that would at least zip me through intersections if I needed a burst of speed. That is the one thing that makes us a “community,” the word having been hijacked over the last few years to mean “a group of people who ban together for purposes of sustaining their victimization.”

We are victimized by cars, not intentionally, but as a function of scale. At 30 mph or the city street speed limit, scooters just don’t look like they are going that fast, so automobile drivers tend to get impatient. We are driving the speed limit. It just doesn’t look it.

That’s why I advise all new members of the fold to develop back-way routes for all errands, even if the errand is work. My route to downtown St. Paul makes me a ghost rider. I leave home, and the next thing you know I am at the newspaper and nobody has seen me.

A. Safety first.

B. I am in no hurry.

I could try and sell that on practicality or environmental awareness or fiduciary responsibility. I could.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com.