Piaggio Group has agreed on a worldwide four-year “technical, commercial, sport, and communication cooperation agreement a technical, commercial, sport and communication co-operation deal with ENI, manufacturers of Agip oils. In short, Agip products will be recommended and sold by Piaggio (and Aprilia, Gilera, Derbi, and Moto Guzzi) dealers worldwide, and and Agip will supply specialty fuels and lubricants for Aprilia, Gilera and Derbi race teams. Thanks to Ryetronics for the story.
Month: March 2006
Schwinn Motor Scooters
While we’d like to thank Schwinn Motor Scooters for linking to 2strokebuzz, we’d also like to make it clear that 2strokebuzz in no way endorses Schwinn motorscooters. I don’t think i’ve ever mentioned them before, simply because they appear to be Chinese Yamaha knockoffs with a big Schwinn sticker on the front. Maybe they’re allright, try it out and let us know what you think, but in the meantime, we’d spend the extra few hundred bucks for a real Yamaha Vino. (UPDATE: 4-18-06: It turns out there’s much more to the story.)
TomTom scooter GPS
If you’ve got a $900 tax refund coming and hate getting lost, the TomTom Rider motorcycle/scooter navigation system looks pretty fantastic. Alwaysblog seemed to really like it, from what i can make out (“Rider” in italian is “to laugh,” ha.) It’d be especially fun to use on a old Vespa, where you need four hands as it is for throttling, braking, shifting, signalling, and holding your 30-pack of Old Style in place.
Scooter Magazines
Carssuck.de‘s multifarious and nifty scooter magazine collection. One of those looks familiar.
Progressive publishes motorcycle accident/theft stats
Last month, Progressive Insurance published a list of collision and theft statistics for 89 metropolitan areas. Chicago surprisingly placed slightly below the national average on both charts, 64th (of 89) “most likely” for collision, and 52nd (of 89) for theft. Just don’t let your bike out of your site in Honolulu, where theft is 4.28 times more likely than the national average. Thanks for the tip, Vespaway.
Vroom with a View
I posted about travel writer Peter Moore’s book Vroom with a View before it came out in America (it’s now under $10 at Amazon), but Nitro reminds us that Peter’s Vroom with a View website has some neat stuff, including a gallery of photos from the trip.
Win a Vespa signed by Corey Hart!
CTV (with the technological help of ABC, because Canadian TV is apparently broadcast in black and white) is giving away a Vespa PX150 as part of their Juno awards shenanigans. If you think it’s worth sitting through any music awards show, let alone one with performances by The Guess Who and 54/40, to win a Vespa, go for it. Note: Events Halifax, one of the sponsors, has an awesome logo.
??????? (Lovino town)
To celebrate our discovery of Scoot2Go, we will help ourselves to one of Rob’s links: Yamaha’s ??????? (Lovino town), an animated series designed to hype the Vino to its target market: six-year-old Japanese girls. Crazy!
Scoot 2 Go Podcast
Podcasts, for all their hype, are generally pretty dissapointing, but Scoot 2 Go has a lot in common with 2strokebuzz: Rob, the Australian host, doesn’t have the world’s best speaking voice, his two-year-old regularly distracts him, and what he lacks in scooter-specific knowlege is balanced by, well, the fact that he was bright enough to be the first person to do it. After 7 quality episodes (well, the first is a bit shaky, ha) Rob has become the self-effacing champion of scooter podcasting, and good for him. He covers the same broad range of scooterdom you’ll find here. Newish scooterists will find the show informative and valuable, and oldtimer know-it-alls will just be happy to know that no one expects them to make a podcast now (whew). In any case, the show’s a must for long drives to rallies. Note that the show can be downloaded directly from the Scoot 2 Go site (where Rob helpfully posts links to everything he mentions on the show), from Apple Music Store (it’s free), or many other podcast directories.
Waxon7 Headlines Double Door Thursday
As any longtime 2strokebuzz reader can tell you, Waxon7 is pretty much the house band of Chicago scooter parties. Abe (the “singer”) leaves his desk at Scooterworks every night to become the Patrick Bateman of Rock and Roll, stripping it down like a Lincoln Park Trixie layered-up in JCrew for a Chicago winter. Guitarist Vee Sonnets crashed my wedding in a red velvet suit. The other guys in the band, well, I’ve never heard them speak, they’re barely human, just some vaguely hispanic mutants Abe brewed up in his crawlspace to help him spread the word. Add some barely-legal go-go dancers and a crowd full of scooterists, and any basement shithole they play is magic. Thursday night just might be their definitive show, they’re headlining the Double Door, the biggest venue they’ve ever played. Cover is $7, or $5 with this flyer, and they’re handing out W7 t-shirts to their fans. Don’t miss it.
Mod*mom
Springtime in Chicago
Ah, the Jewel bags are stuck in trees, the melting snow is revealing fossilized dog poo, illnoise shaved his beard, it must be springtime in Chicago! And so even though the thermometer is showing a balmy 39° and we still have our annual May blizzard to look forward to, Chicago is gearing up for scooter season with several rides:
- Saturday April 8 Chicago Area Scooterist Motorcycle Ride (for scooterists w/motorcycles or 60mph+ scooters), 3-hour ride through Southwest Chicago, meet at Pontiac Grill, 1531 N Damen Ave., at noon.
- Sunday April 9 South Side ride to Top Notch Beef Burger at 2116 w 95th Street. Departs at 11:30 from Ranch de Nitro
- Saturday April 22 Scooterworks ride and open house, details to come.
- Sunday April 23 Walneck’s Motorcycle Swap Meet, Woodstock Illinois
- Saturday May 13 Stock Car Racing at Sycamore Speedway, Sycamore, IL. Racing starts at 8, ride leaves Chicago from Atomix at 6:30 PM
RSS Feed is back
Along with the move to the new server, we’ve cleaned up the RSS feed and moved it to a new home. Read our feed in your newsreader, or add our news to your web page. We’ll be adding category-specific RSS feeds soon, once we get all the archives added and reorganize our categories. Sorry that the last ten posts have been self-referential, but things are moving and shaking.
Amerivespa 2006 registration starts April 1
The Amerivespa 2006 site has been updated with a more-or-less final itinerary. Amerivespa is the official national Vespa Club of America rally, and will take place July 27-30 in Denver, CO. Online registration opens on Saturday. Registering online gets you more swag for your money, joining VCOA saves you $10, as well as four issues of American Scooterist and other good stuff.
Motorcyclist Airbags
I’m not quite sure how much motorcycle airbags would help the chap in the video who is riding a sports bike in a t-shirt, but you can’t help the low levels of common sense in some people. Still, great to see this idea/technology put into practice. Personally, I would forget I’m wearing it, and end up looking much like the Michelin man after I forgot to unhook myself.