Category: Lifestyle

Around Australia

Australian scooterist Julio Languiller is a quarter of the way into his 15-day, 10,000-mile trip around Australia for at-risk and homeless Australian youth. Languilller holds world endurance records on Honda 50, 125, and 150cc scooters and is a veteran of many long-distance charity rides. The Cannonball Run starts in less than a month, their ride is less than a quarter the distance in two-thirds the time, but they’re mostly riding vintage scooters, not 600cc Honda Silverwings, so we’ll cut them some slack.

Tukker update

Jo and Ants, tuk-tuking across the eastern hemisphere, are still rolling and still blogging. They’re off to the Ukraine today after an unintended 4-day stop in Volgograd, Russia. They seem to be under the impression it’ll be easier once they get through the Ukraine, but we’ll see!

Scooternista does the math

Scooternista, a new scooter blog, follows “Modelcarguy” and his quest for two (or three) wheels. The perspective is interesting as he’s not really sure what he wants (he’s leaning towards an Ape or Bajaj threewheeler at the moment) and he’s not entirely sold on the scooter concept to begin with, so his indecision is our gain. Like us, he was dubious of the “scooter economy” promised by Piaggio’s Vespanomics site (and every other scooter company, dealer, and newspaper article). He did the math related to his situation and found what we suspected– in most cases, there are better reasons than economics to buy a scooter.

We’re working on a story outlining the successes (we’re happy to report there are some!) and shortcomings of Piaggio’s “Vespanomics” and “Open Letter to Mayors” PR campaigns, look for it later this week. Please get in touch if you have any insight.

Vespatude

Jonathan Pait’s blog, Vespatude, started about a year ago when he bought a Vespa on eBay. Surely he planned to write about his travels and adventures, but unfortunately he’s spent the year learning why you should never buy an Asian restoration on eBay. Currently, he’s trying to raise some money for a new engine (“Million Dollar Homepage”-style), if you’re in the market for a vintage scooter, throw a few bucks his way to thank him for saving you the trouble of finding out the hard way.

Gadabout town on a Swallow

Barry Hartnell of Wangaratta, Victoria, Australia shows off his motorcycle collection to the ABC, including his pride and joy, a Swa… sorry, Swall… snort! er, Swallow Gadabout, made by:

“…the people who went on to make Jaguar motor cars. (The Vespa) arrived in England and they didn’t have anything to counter it, so they quickly sat down and made this horrible little bike out of steam pipe and tin…”

A 1950 scooter book in Hartnell’s possession:

“…shows all the bikes from A to Z, and when it comes to the Swallow Gadabout, there are seven and a half pages of it’s virtues and how wonderful the bike is and further on in the book you get to “V” for Vespa and it simply says ‘small scooter made in Italy’.”

Great story, great quotes.