Butch Fun Cars IV

Scooter: Kymco Downtown 300i, nicknamed “Tula”.
Color: Burnt Orange (or “Galaxy Gold”, like the original color of the Space Needle)
Purchased: April 4, 2011 at Seattle Cycle Center
Location: April 17, 2011 at Snoqualmie Pass
 

To Every Thing There is a Season! Turn! Turn! Turn!

“Forget World Peace… Visualize Using Your Turn Signal” — that’s what the bumper sticker I remember from the 90s said.  And no place needs it to come back more than Seattle.

Not to say that Seattle drivers don’t user their turn signals.  They do.  Most of them do every time they make a turn.  The problem is, they don’t use them until they make the turn.  (Hint: it’s intended to signal what you’re going to do, not what you are doing.  It’s supposed to be a help to other drivers, so they can drive more efficiently, and so they can give you space to turn rather than hitting you when you suddenly lurch out into their lane.)

The light turns green, and Seattle drivers just sit there, or maybe they creep halfway into the intersection.  Are they asleep?  Are they playing with their phone?  (Probably.)  Are they waiting for ducklings or little old ladies to finish crossing the street?  Did they stall out?  You’re a car or two back, so you can’t tell.  All you really know is that they are sitting there with no signal light flashing, apparently doing nothing.

(Magnifying matters is that I’m usually on my scooter, and in Seattle, it’s probably raining a bit.  And I can’t always lane split to get to the front and bypass the hold-up, especially if they are legitimately blocked [because then I feel like an impatient fool].)

Then, just as you’re reaching for your horn (or maybe after), they start to turn and suddenly now there’s their flasher.  What, did they hit it with their thumb by accident as they turned the wheel?

You can’t even go borderline racist and blame this on DWA, because lots and lots of cars/people do it in Seattle.  I wish I could go back in time and smack their Driver’s Ed teachers upside the head.

I suppose I should note two other things:

• We all do this by accident now and then (me, too), but I encounter someone doing it almost every day.  That goes beyond random chance.
   
• This is nothing new.  I remember trying to follow my father’s car once, probably after my sister’s college graduation in 1990, and having a bitch of time because he didn’t use his turn signals until he was in the middle of a turn.

[Title reference: The song “Turn!  Turn!  Turn!” by The Byrds.]
 

Avoid: Ace Rent-a-Car

As lightly described in this post, I recently rented from Ace Rent A Car in Los Angeles over Labor Day weekend.  It wasn’t what I would call a great experience.

When I looked for rental cars on Kayak, Ace came up as cheapest, by a factor of almost 1/2.  Their cheapest rental was a smart car at about $12 a day, with tax and fees, about $50 for the Friday–Monday rental.  I typically rent from Alamo, but since I needed the car just for in-city driving — you can’t get anywhere in Los Angeles without a vehicle, and cabs can be way too costly as I found on my last trip, two years ago — so I gave them a try.

Ace is located off-airport, at the nearby Sheraton.  These days, you have to catch a shuttle from most any airport to the car lots, so that was no big deal.

At the rental desk, they had terminals for up to three agents working.  One customer was being served, and one return was being processed.  A third agent came up and helped the one person in line in front of me.  When the return was done, that agent left for the back room.  (On break?  I don’t know.)  The first rental was having issues of some sort.  When the second rental was done, that agent also left.  Once they finally helped me, it had been 45 minutes from when I arrived at the rental desk (an hour from when I caught the shuttle) until they got me the car, with only one person in line in front of me.  Fortunately I had no particular place I needed to be until that evening, so the delay was mostly annoyance, but it would have been bigger had this been a trip where I had a meeting to get to or where I was flying into Los Angeles and driving to Palm Springs.

(In comparison, at Alamo I would have walked to a kiosk — which probably wouldn’t have had anyone in line at it, since most people don’t seem to know to use them — and since I’m a Quicksilver member, I would have spent about 3 minutes at the kiosk, walked out to the parking lot, grabbed my car, and been gone in total time of less than 10 minutes, max.)

I had to fill out more than one form, including manually transcribing my insurance number twice.  They required a $250 deposit to do the rental, so I had to put it on my debit card rather than the credit card I wanted to use.  (This was indicated in the details on their web site, so I was fine with it.)

(In comparison, just a couple initials — checkboxes on the kiosk UI — at Alamo, and I could have paid with the debit card in advance, with no deposit.  In positive comparison, though, I refuse to rent from Thrifty because of their forms: the last time I rented from them [about a decade ago, so it may have changed], their agents had to verbally read you the entire text rather than letting you read it, making the rental process about 5 times as long as it needs to be.)

Because it was a holiday weekend, I didn’t get the car I had reserved, but I ended up with a larger one at the same price.  (That’s fairly standard.  I once ended up with a huge Lincoln or some such huge beast at compact price point because they oversold all their lower classes of car.)  The car was not well cleaned inside, including what looked like shoe marks on the passenger seat.  I got the impression that, as a second or third tier company, Ace probably gets last year’s models from the first tier companies and then doesn’t put much into maintenance and cleaning.  Or else people who rent from them don’t take care of the rentals very well.  (Or I could have just got an undertended one due to the weekend’s pressure to turn things through quickly, an exception.)

The car worked fine for the weekend.

When I returned it on Monday, I fortunately didn’t have to wait 45 minutes to be served.  But during the check-in, the agent sat behind his terminal and clicked this, paused, clicked that, paused, click the other, paused.  After what felt like 15 minutes of whatever he was doing (was probably only 5), he told me that his computer had frozen, but my deposit would be refunded.

(The mainline rental companies check you in when you drive up.  They check the gas and mileage and look for any damage, give you a receipt, and you’re done.  I have no idea what all he was entering, why he was so slow, or how long he was trying to do something with the frozen computer, nor why he didn’t ask anyone for help.  Implication: this isn’t a quick process for them and the freezes happen often enough to not be remarkable.)

After returning home, I monitored my checking account to see when the deposit would free up.  Usually the rental and deposit will be issued separately, with the deposit being an account hold which will free in a maximum of 72 hours because it wasn’t actually charged.  Since I brought the car back fine, the rental charge would go through and the hold would be allowed to expire.  Not with Ace: on Wednesday morning, the entire $300 had been deducted from my account!  I called them up and they said this was standard practice and the deposit would be refunded.  On Friday, it still had not, and a call said 3 to 7 business days (and thus maybe not until the next Wednesday); at this point, I had my suspicions that I might have to fight them over things.  Fortunately, end of day Tuesday (6 business days out), the $300 was refunded to my account.

Notice what didn’t happen: because the two charges were lumped together, by refunding it, they didn’t actually charge me for the rental at all.  So I lost access to $250 for a week, but ended up technically ahead of the game.  (But with a bad taste for the company in the process.)

So, in summary:

• Very slow check-out service
• Dirty car
• Slow and uncommunicative check-in service
• Deposit not done as an account hold and only refunded over a week later
• Ultimately, they couldn’t even process the rental fee correctly and lost their money

Conclusion: a company that doesn’t deserve the business.  I would have spent $100 on renting from Alamo rather than (expecting to spend) $50 at Ace, but I would have had a much better experience.  If I had been under any sort of deadline or distance pressure for the weekend, the $50 difference would have been totally worth it.  Lesson learned.

---

Updated on October 14, 2010

Turns out that the rental fee did eventually show up, charged to the original credit card I had made the reservation with.  The computer freeze had blocked me from getting a close-out receipt, so I couldn’t know that at the time.

Following my rental, they sent me an online customer service survey request, and I took the opportunity to rate them pretty poorly.  (I refrained from outright cussing the out.)  A couple days ago, I got a letter thanking me for taking the survey and expressing that they were sorry that I didn’t have a good rental experience.  They also included one of those ubiquitous grocery tote bags.  Wonder if I can turn it inside out so their logo doesn’t show?

What Were They Thinking? — Mirror, Mirror, On the Bumper

“What Were They Thinking?” highlights products and presentations which just don’t make sense.

On the way to work a couple weeks ago, I was following this Cadillac Escalade SUV.

Side-stepping the obvious question — “Who the heck puts a $3 bumper sticker on a $50,000 car?” — I looked closer.  (Oops, my error.  Checked out actual prices on this class of vehicle: $62,000–$75,000.  Yow!)

So now the question becomes “Who the heck puts a reverse image bumper sticker on the back bumper of a car?”

(Hint: Reverse image items are intended to be read in a mirror.  No one is going to see your back bumper in their mirror.  These are intended either for your front bumper — which is also a stupid place for them, since if someone is trying to read your bumper sticker while looking in that mirror, they are going to get in an accident [plus the front bumper isn’'t usually visible in a rear-view mirror anyway] — or the thing is supposed to go inside your back window or on your bedroom wall opposite your dresser, where you will see the devotional reminder in your own mirror and… well, I don’t know what you do then.  Feel good?  Read the Bible?  Watch Glee?)
 

10,000 Miles on a Scooter — 22 Months — 10 Questions

As of about February 1, 2010, I have ridden roughly 10,000 miles on my scooter.  Here is a series of 10 Questions people might have about scooters and riding them.

1. What do you ride?

I ride a royal blue Kymco People S scooter.  It is a bit different from many scooters, with a somewhat wider front (better wind blocking), a windscreen, a larger seat, and a bigger front wheel.  And the design doesn’t look like a Vespa knock-off (which I liked).

I have three helmets: a full-face with a hinged front (silver), a 3/4-face (silver), and a “skid lid” (black, for summer and buddy riders).  I have also added a Givi trunk on the back, which gives me a good amount of storage (but especially because only the “skid lid” helmet will fit under the seat, so I need it to hold the helmet when I park).

The engine size on my scooter is large enough that I can take it on pretty much any roads I need to.  Not all scooters at this lower end (especially 50cc engines, of course, which are limited to city streets) are able to actually deal with highway speeds, but mine can maintain 55–60 mph much of the time.  (I slow down on steep hills, and I’ve had it above 70 on descents.)  Basically, I just stick to the right-hand lane most of the time and cruise along right about at the speed limit (as opposed to 10 mph over it as many cars prefer to do); so long as I don’t impede other cars, I’m generally fine.

2. When and where did you get it?

I bought my scooter (which I have named “Donny”) in mid-April 2008.

Prior to buying the scooter, I spend a couple weeks checking out models at various dealers around the city (and even down in Kent, 30 minutes south of home; at the time, I was gong down there once a week, so it was reasonably convenient).  It seemed that every time I turned around, I was finding out about yet another scooter brand.  In addition to just checking out looks, visiting the dealers was important for physically sitting on the different models, to imagine myself riding one and seeing how they felt.  I settled on the Kymco becasue it felt bigger and more stable than many of the comparable engine size models.

Ultimately, I bought mine from Interbay Scooters in Seattle, on the recommendation from my manager, who had bought his from Interbay as well.  Some scooter fans I know don’t like Interbay (or didn’t; they have since closed when the owners retired), but I have had good relations with them and good service all along the way.

3. Why did you get it?

Remember the summer of 2008?  Remember the gas prices in the summer of 2008?  Between $4 and $5 a gallon?  In March of that year, I could predict that was going to happen, as prices were already climbing and they always jump further for the summer months.

My car gets about 15–18 mpg (it’s a small SUV, and never was high on the chain of MPG anyway).  About a year before this, I had done a rough calculation that each 5-mile trip to Capitol Hill and back (“to the bars”: shorthand for any in-city round trip further than the 1/2 mile to the grocery store, including the 6.5-mile trip to work) cost me about 2/3 of a gallon of gas.  When gas crossed $4 a gallon, that closed in on $2.50 a trip, which equates to “a beer”.  This meant that I started to evaluate whether trips were “worth” it; going for just one beer would double the actual price of that beer due to the overhead of just driving there and back.

My manager and several co-workers rode scooters and motorcycles, and the cognizance that they got really good gas mileage (like 4 times what my car got) made me ask more questions and start to do some research.  Our building at work has a large concrete area out back where the scooters and motorcycles park, and it turns out that parking is free, which beats the pants of the (subsidized) $90 a month I was paying to use the garage.  In other words, between gas and parking savings, the scooter would be paying for itself.  Saving money is good.
And of course, what boy hasn’t wanted to zoom zoom on a motorcycle, at least a little?

While I did some shopping around to look at different models and read tons of online reviews, my manager let me get some riding practice on his scooter a few times, just in the parking lot across the street from our building, down an alley, and around the block.  It was enough to make sure that I could handle a scooter and actually would want to.

4. Why didn’t you get a “real” motorcycle?

Yes, that’s the way some people phrase the question.  To them, “scooter” equates to “moped” which equates to “bicycle that you can cheat with,” I think.  At a minimum, they see a scooter as a “toy” motorcycle.

Without getting too defensive, such a question is generally clueless, although there is a germ of truth in the idea.

First, there is a legal definition of a “moped”, as defined by engine size (under 50cc) and speed (under 30mph).  Almost nothing you see on the streets that you would identify as a “scooter” falls under that definition.

Most scooters that you will encounter are in the 49–150cc range.  49cc scooters are appropriate for in-city use, topping out their speed between 30–40 mph (slower with more weight and uphill, of course).  I have been told that 125cc and above are allowed to go on the freeway and highway, although not all are appropriate for such; some really don’t have the power to sustain highway speeds, and some are small or light enough that they just don’t belong in traffic at that speed or are prone to wind issues.  But scooters go up from there: 250cc, 500cc, 650cc, just as big and suitable for traffic as any motorcycle.  (In fact, some of the large scooters end up looking not too far off from the larger engine motorcycles used by the police.)

There are few practical differences between a scooter and a “motorcycle”.  (When you say “motorcycle”, think about the visual and physical differences between a cruiser and a sport cycle, yet they are both “valid” motorcycles, right?).  Most (but not all) scooters are automatics, and most (but not all) motorcycles are manual.  Scooters generally have the gas tank under the seat, except that the larger ones have the tank between the riders legs (like a motorcycle).  Handlebar controls and displays aren’t notably different.

Ultimately, the biggest differences between a scooter and a motorcycle are (a) the physical floorboard that scooters have, which encourages a standard seated posture vs. the leaning forward or reclining back postures of sport and cruiser cycles.  (If anything, having a posture between the other two should help prove scooters are part of the larger motorcycle continuum.)  And (b) scooters have a physical cut-through from side to side which motorcycles do not.  (Which can actually be seen as a safety feature, reducing the risk of leg injuries and being trapped beneath a fallen vehicle.)

So, having argued that a scooter is a “real” motorcycle, why did I choose a scooter over another type of motorcycle?  Why didn’t I want something more traditional for a leatherman?  Ultimately, the answer lies in my goal for getting the vehicle — primarily for in-city commuting, to work and the bar and other short hop locations — plus the influences I had around me from co-workers, most of whom rode scooters rather than motorcycles.  Oh, and the price: scooters with small engine sizes are priced less than motorcycles.

One final note is that my initial intent was purely for in-city commute riding, for which I was initially looking at the 49cc options — lighter and cheaper — but I was advised to get at least a 125cc due to the greater power and options it would give me.  As I was told, “Get the bigger one, because in two months, you’ll want it.”  And that was very true.

5. Did you need a special license?

You need a Motorcycle Endorsement for scooters over 50cc (in Washington state; laws may differ elsewhere).  This isn’t a separate license, but an add-on to a regular motor vehicle license.  Obviously, it’s hard to get that endorsement before you get (and get used to) your vehicle, so like with auto licenses, you pass a written test and you can get a temporary permit.  (This shows as a letter on your license, which means you get a new picture and new license, $15 please.)  This allows you to ride the vehicle for three months, but with a couple reasonable limits: no riding after dark, and no passengers, both of which take a level of skill that brand new riders do not have.

(No, of course I didn’t strictly adhere to those limits.  Before the three months was up, I had ridden after dark a few times and with a passenger once.  But those were after a solid two months or so of riding on a daily basis, and I was really careful.)

The recommended path to a endorsement, and the one pushed by the state, is to attend a riding course, typically two 8-hour days on the weekend and about $100, where you can either use your own vehicle or they will supply one for you.  Once you successfully complete the course, you automatically get your endorsement.

The classes are popular.  In spring of 2008, ramping up for the summer and with lots of people on two-wheeled motorized vehicles for the first time, the classes were packed.  Want to take one?  You get your choice: register for one three months from now (which you’ll notice is after the permit would run out), or pay $300 (triple) to get in one only a month out.

You know something?  I’m cheap, my weekends are busy, and I’m a believer that I can do it myself, so I said “Fuck that” and decided to ride the scooter as much and as often as I could.  I rode it to work every day (except one day when I needed to take the cat to the vet).  Once it got light enough later in the evening, I rode it to dance practice, and by June, even to dancing (although, yes, it was twilight and beyond when I would get home, shame shame).  I also rode it to Kent once a week (15 miles, half of it on the freeway; riding to work also had a short stint on the freeway, depending on the route I took).  I even rode all the way to Union once (50 miles each way, plus a ferry trip).

In short, I got lots and lots of experience, riding on all kinds of surfaces, in all kinds of weather, at all speeds and traffic levels.  I also prepared for the riding test bywatching YouTube videos of tests and finding where the test was done locally so I could practice the course (as best as I could figure it).

The course involves tight cornering, straight driving, fast braking, and dead slow weaving in and out among cones.  It was revealing to watch others take the test before I did.  (People had arrived as much as an hour early, so I was like 20th that morning.)  Some were massively unprepared for the test (both scooter riders and those on standard motorcycles), to the point I wondered if they were trying to take the test with mere hours of riding under their belts.  The cones was especially difficult for many people.

So how did I do?  100%.  Aced the test.  (I braked a bit too hard/too fast for my own tastes in that piece of the test, but it was still fine for the test monitor.)
Guess there’s no harm in being cheap and busy and practicing a lot.

6. What about insurance?

Yes, insurance for a motorcycle or scooter is required by law (although you don’t have to show proof of insurance to get your endorsement or vehicle license, I think).

Remarkably, it’s both easy to get and cheap.  I got mine via Geico (they do my car insurance as well).  First year was something like $165 for the year, and then it dropped to like $120.  $10 a month!.  For a year.  Damn!  My car insurance costs that much for a month!  (Actually, it also dropped a little last year, but still….)

Of course, when you think about it, a collision in a car is going to do a lot of damage to the car, and to whatever you hit, perhaps fatally if that’s a person.  My scooter weighs, what, 300 lbs?  Probably weighs 1/8 of my car, cost 1/8 of my car, and would only do 1/8 the damage if I hit something.  Although 1/8 fatal might still be fatal, I guess.

7. Are scooters safe?  Have you had any accidents?

Erm, um, well…  That depends on your definition of “safe”, doesn’t it?  I have had no injury worse than a sprained wrist (knock on wood).

About six weeks after I got the scooter, a motorcycle rider waiting for the same Southworth-Fauntleroy ferry as I was told me “There are only two kinds of motorcycles in the world: those that have been dropped, and those that haven’t been dropped yet.”  (I had dropped mine earlier that day, pulling into a gravel parking lot.)

As best I can recall, here are my scooter boo-boos:

• April 2008: made too tight of a U-turn; dropped it rather than hit a parked SUV
• May 2008: parked on a downhill sloping cobblestone street; couldn’t hold it up when I took it off the stand
• June 2008: pulled into a gravel parking lot
• August 2008: a woman hit the parked scooter in the QFC parking lot and knocked it over
• October 2008: went down on wet pavement while riding, avoiding a car blindly changing lanes; abraded my leather jacket and scraped my elbow
• March 2009: another too-tight U-turn (and I may have been tipsy, shame one me)
• March 2009: someone backed into my parked scooter in West Seattle and knocked it down; I got a small insurance settlement on that
• August 2009: miscalculated the slope of my steep driveway and tipped over from parked position; sprained my wrist trying to stop the fall (and I’m still having problems, 6 months later)
• December 2009: hit black ice while riding; wrenched my shoulder

So while I’ve had my share of dropping the scooter, my worst injury has been a sprained wrist (which is still bothering me know and then, five months later), a total of a few hundred dollars in mostly cosmetic damage to the scooter, and no damage to other vehicles/buildings/people.  (It’s hard to compare to the car, since you can’t “drop” it in the same way.  But if you count bumper taps on up, on my car I’ve been living with a crushed bumper corner for 4.5 years and a slowly growing crack in the windshield for 4 years; fixing those would be over $2000, so I haven’t bothered.)

8. What is great about riding a scooter?  And specifically your model?

Where do I start?

• No cage.  Motorcyclists sometimes refer to cars as “cages”, to indicate that the people in them are stuck in a box.  This is very true.  Not having the roof, the doors, the hood, and the backseat/trunk/tailgate around you increases what you can see immensely.  Did you see that house over there?  How about the raccoons by the side of the road?  Did you get a look at the flowers down that hillside past the guard rails?  See how cool the shadows of the telephone poles are?  Did you catch those clouds racing by overhead? You miss massive amounts of stuff just because the cage of the car blocks your view.
• Sounds and smells.  You can smell the rich aromas of the coffee roaster or the bakery with no rolled-up car windows in the way.  (Okay, you can smell the dairy farm, too.)
• The freedom for small jaunts.  Ever feel guilty that you’re firing up the SUV to go a mile to the store for milk and butter, because it would take an hour to walk, but you need just that couple of things?  (You should.)  Much less guilt on the scooter.
• The freedom for pleasure trips.  During the height of the gas prices in 2008 (and they are creeping up again in 2010!), driving somewhere just for a jaunt, a Sunday drive, was expensive and thus not to be done.  Riding a scooter for a 4-hour round trip?  It cost me like $20 including two ferry fares and an ice cream snack.  Even my trip to Vancouver in August 2008 was only like $30 in gas.
• Parking.  Ever drive around for 20 minutes trying to find a space, and end up paying through the nose for a garage or pay lot?  Now try it on a vehicle that takes 1/3 the space of a car (1/4 the space of an SUV).  Oh look, there’s a fractional space now, and it’s right in front of where you were going!  Any time cost in putting on coat and gloves and helmet are made up on the arrival end by parking being way easier and needing to walk less far after you park..
• The cost of gas.  Actually, the cognitive difference in the cost of getting gas.  Even putting the gas mileage difference aside, when filling your tank costs $5 or less and takes only a couple minutes, it feels very inconsequential.
• The cost of the ferry. My mother lives on Bainbridge Island, a ferry ride away.  For the past several years, I have done walk-ons to visit her, having her pick me up at the dock.  Here's how things stack up in peak season: car and driver is $14.85 each way; motorcycle and rider in $6.45 each way; walk-on is $6.90 to Bainbridge, no charge returning.  In other words, for a one-way trip (I could always ride down to Gig Harbor and back up I-5), a motorcycle is actually cheaper than walking on, and it's about 40% the price of driving a car, so it is instantly a lot easier on the wallet to visit Mom or go to her vacation home near Hood Canal.  And what's almost better is that motorcycles (and bicycles) load on the ferry first (or they can squeeze you on at the end; and they unload first, too!), so there's never a worry about not getting on the next ferry when visiting on busy holidays.

Is there anything specifically cool about my Kymco People S scooter?  That’s a lot harder to sum up.  It’s always easier to name things you don’t like, and even things you do like can have a negative angle to them. Is the larger size and non-“Italian” styling of my scooter, which makes it look more like a full motorcycle and less like a Vespa wanna-be, “cool”?  Do I mention the power converted plug under the seat, which I can use to charge a phone or laptop while ridin (finally used it just the other day)?  Do I mention the windscreen, which not all scooters (or even motorcycles) have, but which makes a difference riding and highway speeds and in keeping the Seattle rain off me while riding?

I definitely make mention of storage space, since there's more than you might expect.  On that trip to Vancouver, I took clothing for the weekend — including boots and some leather gear and toys — and a laptop and other needs with me, getting them all stuffed under the seat or in the helmet-sized trunk (which I can detach and carry like a suitcase).  If I were to lasha carry bag on the seat behind me (which would do double duty as a back support), I could do a week-long trip or carry a tent and sleeping bag for camping.

Makes you think about the volumes of wasted space we lug around in cars.  (Which was one of the stoppers for me years ago when I got my current car: I liked little pickups, but somehow the open nature of the truck bed made me that much more aware of the typically empty chunk of metal I would be dragging around everywhere.)

9. What is less-than-great about riding a scooter?

• No phone!  No boat!  No motorcar!  Not a single luxury!
• More seriously, no heater.  It can get damn cold when the weather dips below 40!
• No defroster for the inside of the helmet when it fogs up from my breath.
• No windshield wiper for the face shield on the helmet.  This can get nasty on a rainy night.
• No radio or CD player.  I can’t listen to that new CD I bought or enjoy listening to radio hosts jabber in the mornings rather than playing music (okay, that’s a whole ’nother rant).  Driving by yourself is already a solitary activity; riding a motorcycle without tunes is three steps beyond that.  I do have speakers in my helmet that I can plug into my iPhone, but even at top volume, I get little more that a hint of the song when I’m moving (and less than that when I’m on the highway).  Maybe if I can get some powered helmet speakers…
• Can’t use the cell phone.  Okay, maybe that’s not really someting bad, now that I think of it.  Except for those times when it would be really good to make a quick call, to tell someone my ETA.  I’m sure there are hands-free Bluetooth solutions out there, but my need to use the phone while on the road is infrequent enough to not warrant the cost.  (Aside: a couple years ago, with my old flip phone and driving on city streets in Vancouver, I did wedge it into the helmet to make it a hands-free device for the duration of the one call.)
• Cost of parking.  While parking for a scooter is fairly easy to find, you still usually have to pay full price for it, even though you are only using 1/4 to 1/3 the space of a car.  For parking garages, that’s really dumb, although a handful do have a dedicated motorcycle parking area and a reduced price for such vehicles.  There was talk a couple years ago about ways to fix this in Seattle, with some permitting sticker, but I think the impetus evaporated.
• Design flaw in the system: Gas Gauge.  The fuel display is totally whacked.  While I get 100+ miles to the tank, the gauge sits on Full for the first 40 miles and then starts dropping, so that the 1/2 tank mark is really about 1/3 of a tank left and so on.  You can actually visually watch the gauge very slowly drop through the last 1/4 tank when you’re on the highway.  I’ve learned to adjust to this, but how hard is it to make a gauge reflect reality?
• Design flaw in the system: Speedometer.  Speaking of reflecting reality: the speedomter is always about 5 mph faster than I’m actually travelling, so you have to know how to mentally adjust to get the true speed, and then its an approximation (although isn’t is always?).  A more significant design flow, though, is that the speedometer has an inner circle for miles, in red, and an outer one for kilometers, in white, but only the white circle lights up at night, so you have to know how to convert kilometers to miles (or memorize dial locations) in order to check your speed. 
• Design flaw in the system: Speedometer Cable.  In August 2008, the speedometer cable broke and had to be replaced, and it took Interbay two months to get a replacement.  Then in August 2009, it broke again and I had no speedometer for another month.  Since that also controls the odometer, my scooter shows about 1600 miles less than I’ve actually traveled.  Should I expect this to fail again in August 2010?
• Design flaw in the system: Parking Lights.  The parking lights for the scooter are apparently too high voltage (or whatever) for the scooter’s electric system, and they started causing starter issues (I would have to try two or three times) in December 2008, and the battery itself failed in September 2009.  Interbay replaced the bulbs with dummies, which should prevent the issue, but I lose my parking lights as a result.

10. What other thoughts do you have about scooters and riding them?

Our society is so heavily car-oriented that if you are a regular driver, it takes a huge leap to get out of that mode and into walking, bus, bicycling, or even scooter/motorcycle transport.  Take that jump!

The scariest thing with riding a scooter was the first few times I got on the freeway.  You really have to have a sense of bravado and self-invulnerability to do that, to allow you to not think about the speeds and the other vehicles and the concrete barriers.  Channel the comic book men-without-fear: Green Lantern and Daredevil.  (As opposed to the Men Without Hats.)

One of the biggest concerns that people have is “crazy other drivers”, that is, car drivers who either don’t see/react to people on scooters and motorcycles (and bicycles), or who actively try to cut us off, make us crash, whatever.  I have experienced a couple cases of unaware drivers.  The one who cause my crash in October 2008 was coming off the freeway (and thus probably going over the speed limit) and rapidly crossed all the lanes of traffic; I doubt that he ever saw me and even if he did, I’m sure he didn’t know I went down  And I’ve had a couple times where a car will pull just past me on the left and stay in that lane, where I’m probably in his blind spot; he won’t speed up to see me, he won’t slow back down, and he doesn’t change lanes, although I have to assume he plans to and thus need to be extra guarded.  In general, though, Seattle drivers have been sufficiently courteous, giving me enough room to ride and not generally cutting my safety space or otherwise being badly aggressive.  (People who know Seattle drivers know that they can be, if anything, too polite, to the point that they will hamper both their own and other people’s driving in an effort to let other people have the road.)

Any of the West Coast, South, and Southwest cities are great for scooters pretty much year round, given the usual lack of snow.  The hills in Seattle (or San Francisco) make scooters that much more attractive over walking!  I’ve been surprised, though, to not see nearly the number of scooters that I see in Seattle when I go to Vancouver or San Francisco.  Those cities should be just a scootered up as we are here.  (Amsterdam and New Zealand, on the other hand, there are a couple places which have embraced scooters.)
I participate in events from the gay scooter club, Sqream, including a few in-city rides a year and one or two longer ones.  It’s great to have that added level of support, and none of the people I’ve met in the club are people who overlap into other activities in my life (which is both refreshing and little weird to realize that there are a bunch of other circles in the gay community which apparently never intersect with mine other than in this way.

I have this increasing itch to upgrade my scooter.  The car will be paid off in less than a month.  I expect that I’ll (try to!) wait until at least fall, maybe early spring next year, though.  Larger scooter, or full-on motorcycle?  My boyfriend rides a sport cycle, I see myself as much more of a cruiser man.  (Fits that leather image better that a sport bike.)

Between lower gas costs and free parking at work, but including the cost of jacket, gloves, three helmets, and insurance, the scooter will have roughly paid for itself by the time it is two years old.  That’s a good deal!

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Updated on March 15, 2010

Added moped definition, made a couple other changes.

 

New Zealand 2010: Auckland to Rotorua (Sunday, February 14)

Written in the room in Rotorua, 10:58 pm on Tuesday, February 16

After breakfast, we packed and checked out, left our bags at the hotel desk, and caught the shuttle back to the airport to get our rental car for the rest of the trip.  Mom had done all the driving when we went to Ireland, but she’s letting me do much of it on this trip.

Aiee!  Left side of the road!

It has proven a bit difficult to get used to driving on the left side of the road.  Without really realizing it before, I now see that I track the left side of the lane when driving an American car, so I started off doing the same here in New Zealand.  But from the opposite side of the car, that is hard to judge, so I kept drifting onto the shoulder.  (Two days later, I’m getting much better.  I did once lapse into right side driving, but quickly fixed myself.)

The other oddity with this driving is that the wiper and signal controls are switched from where I’m used to (opposite sides of the steering column), so every time I try to signal, I turn on the wipers instead.  (Fortunately, it is being drippy in Rotorua, so that’s less of a problem than it might be.)

Before leaving Auckland, we had kebabs at Kebabs on Queen, and drinks from a local “dairy” (the local name for a convenience store).  I had a Frank brand Tangy Blood Orange soda; it doesn’t taste any different from a regular orange soda.  We then caught coffee from The Coffee Club.

We drove south from Auckland about 90 minutes to Hamilton, switched drivers, and then another hour-plus east to Rotorua.  Rotorua is on a crater lake, the second largest lake on the North Island.  In the 1800s, it was home to the Pink and White Terraces, fabulous calcite pools formed by the geothermal activity; one mention we saw referred to them as the 8th Wonder of the World, but lots of things dubbed themselves that.  The Terraces were destroyed in 1886 by a massive eruption that killed 120 people nearby.

We are staying at the Marama Resort, a Worldmark timeshare property.  It is actually on the far side of the lake from Rotorua, about a 15-20 minute drive; it is closer to the village of Mourea.  I drove into Rotorua that evening, just to scope things out.

Internet access is only available at the registration office.  They have WiFi, but I have to hang out over by the closed-at-night office, either on their stoop or in a parked car. Annoying.

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Updated on March 11, 2010

Added links.
Added travel map.

Updated on April 2, 2010

Changed travel map to a live one.

Updated on May 18, 2010
 

Insured? Can’t prove it by the ID Card!

My ex is still on my auto insurance policy through Geico.  (Long story.)  He’s covered by the same policy, but not as a “spouse”.

I recently got my insurance ID cards for the two vehicles (mine and his).  Three cards per vehicle, all listing only me as “Insured”.

This became a problem a few months ago, when he got stopped for a broken tail light.  He got a ticket because his “proof of insurance” didn’t cover him.  We got Geico to fax paperwork indicating that he was covered under the policy, which should have taken care of things.

With the new ID cards, I called Geico to request cards be issued with him as “Insured” as well.  No can do, they tell me.  Even though he’s insured under the policy, only myself and my “spouse” can be listed on the ID cards as actually insured.  What’s up with that?

So I’m having them fax the paperwork again, and then I will give it and the new cards to my ex.  If he gets stopped, he’ll probably have to argue with the cop over whether or not his insurance is valid, and he might even have to get a ticket that he’ll have to fight (with all the stress and time lost that accompanies that).

I’m pleased that Geico will cover other than immediate family under the same policy, but this refusal to list as insured someone who is insured is ridiculous.
 

Butch Fun Cars II

Land Rover Freelander SE3.  2004.

Rutland Red.  Last night.

More later…

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Added links on March 14, 2011
 

Butch Fun Cars

For the past couple months, I’ve been thinking that it’s time to get a new car.  My current one (a Plymouth Neon) will be 9 years old in early August.  A few months older than that, actually, since I bought a demo model with 6500 miles on it at the time.

(Yes, Plymouth Neon, not Dodge Neon.  The hood has the Plymouth star emblem on it, not the Dodge ram.  Identical car, just made in a different factory.)

My green Neon — named “Pranth”; my previous car was a white Hyundai Excel GL which I named “Danth” (SCA and Pern fans should get the joke) — has served me well for the past 117,000 miles, some 14,000 miles per year.  It’s never been broken into (knock on wood), it’s never been in a serious accident (but it has the still-dented fender from when I hit something unknown on the freeway — not a car — 6 months after I got it, and the hanging rear bumper where I was rear-ended about two years after I got the car), and it’s only broken down on me once (last year with a water pump which went out while I was getting a blowjob while driving down the freeway, ahem, never mind).

In looking at my next car, I’m thinking about just what I want out of a car.  I want a “butch, fun car”.  I characterize that as a non-sports-car convertible: something to have fun driving in which looks appropriate for a leatherman, and which is large enough to carry home stuff bought at Lowe’s or IKEA.  (A VW Beetle convertible fails on two of those.  So does a ’Vette, to me.)  The classic example of this is the Jeep Wrangler (with a hardtop; no “clouded-up plastic windows and rip me open with a knife” soft tops, please!).

(Note that there are two things which some people would call “butch fun cars” which I don’t want: I don’t want a pickup and I don’t want a big SUV.)

So I go out looking at what is out there in this class.  Defining the class itself is hard.  Is it a “convertible”?  Is it an “SUV”?  Is it a “sports car”?  Is it a “pickup truck”?  My best term for the class I’m looking for is “(semi)convertible small SUV” (or a “semi-con” as opposed to a “non-con”, a regular, non-convertible SUV).  That at least makes it easier to look for similar things on car company web sites.

What I’ve found is that there’s almost nothing out there to buy in this class, although there used to be!  Jeep makes the Wrangler (in several flavors; I would probably want Renegade Sahara or Rubicon), and these can be found all over Seattle.  Land Rover introduced the Freelander in 2003 with the SE3 variant, which is an SUV with a removable back end; I have seen precisely one driving around Seattle since I found out about the vehicle.  Suzuki used to make the Samurai, a Wrangler look alike, but discontinued it years ago.  Toyota’s Rav4 used to be a semi-con, but it’s now a hardbody SUV.  Chevrolet used to make the Tracker in this class, built on the Suzuki Vitara, but that became a non-con only in 2004.  Isuzu discontinued the Amigo a decade ago, brought it back as the Rodeo Sport, and discontinued it a couple years ago.  Chevrolet also makes the SSR, a convertible pickup.  (But it’s a pickup, it looks even more fucked up than the PT Cruiser, and it starts at a whopping $42,000!)

So my choices are Jeep Wrangler or Land Rover Freelander SE3.  (Or last year’s Tracker, which I can still buy new 3 hours away in Portland, according to the Chevy web site.  The SSR isn’t a viable option, not at that price point.)  Nobody else produces something in this class.  Nobody.

Over the holidays, I went to Palm Springs, and I rented a Dodge Dakota for the week.  (It was the cheapest thing I could get at LAX, $100 less for the week than even a Ford Focus, believe it or not!)  After about five days of driving it, of getting in and out of it, I found that my knees started to hurt from the stepping up and down due to the vehicle’s height.  (I hurt them years ago playing volleyball, and then never took the long time to let them fully heal due to my performance dancing.  They don’t bother me much these days, but now and then they kick up.)  If anything yanked tall pickups and big SUVs out of the running for me for sure, that was it — I can’t (won’t) drive a vehicle that will cause me pain.

So what I want to do is rent these vehicles for a week to really test them out — find out how I will deal with them physically, and see what will really annoy me about the way they drive or their interior features.  But you can’t do that.  The dealerships won’t rent the vehicles, just test drive them for an hour.  The only major rental company which says online that they have Wranglers in their fleet is Dollar, but they won’t rent them to you in Seattle, and their phone people say “Are you sure we have those?”  (Some companies may have them in select markets.  Wranglers are apparently common rentals in the Caribbean, for example, not that such helps me here.)  Avis had the gall to tell me that they don’t have them because there’s no demand for them; gee, maybe no one asks for them because you don’t have any for them to rent!  I love the things that customer support and sales people make up to be able to not say “I don’t know why.”)  Land Rover, not even being based in the United States, is just about as easy (read: impossible) to rent, it seems.  I’ve found that Enterprise in Seattle has some Freelanders (but not SE3s), which should deal with most of my rental desires, leaving only “How is it without the top on?” to be determined by test drives.  Maybe I can find a recent model Jeep for rent via the yellow pages from a used car dealer, but I have no real expectation of that.

The overall frustration here brings up a more major point about our society: how do we make decisions to buy things?  We’re encouraged to (and really only allowed to) have limited information to make decisions with.  In many cases, a TV is a TV is a TV: so long as you like the look and can see that the remote isn’t too confusing, if it’s the right size, then it’s fine.  But when you’re talking about a $25,000 car you’ll be dealing with for several years — or to take it the next step up, I spent maybe three hours total in my house before offering to buy it for $250,000 — it seems like we should want to be really damn sure that we are going to be happy with what we buy.  Instead, we have to swallow and live with anything bad about what we buy that we didn’t notice before hand.  That’s a bitter, horse-sized pill.

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Updated on January 18, 2011
 

Look Both Ways… Please!

A few years ago, I saw an e-mail list which included this: “You know you live in Seattle if… you stand on a deserted street corner in the rain waiting for the light to change.”  (Item #3 on that list.  To which I added: “And it’s 2:00 in the morning.”)  Of course, probably the biggest part of this is that jaywalking in Seattle actually can get you a ticket!  Still, Seattle has a reputation for polite and patient pedestrians.

But it also has incredibly stupid ones.

Twice in the past week, someone has been crossing the street in front of my car — mid-block, not at a crosswalk, so much for waiting for the light to change — and they look to see that I’m coming, then walk out into the street.  Which itself is fine, since I’ve not been right on them, ready to hit them the second they step out.  But as they walk across my lane, with my car barrelling toward them at 30 miles an hour (or more, undoubtedly a couple miles over the speed limit, like everyone else), they are looking away from me.  While it’s good to check where the cars are in the next lane over, I personally would want to see if the car I’m already in front of is, say, being driven by a homicidal maniac who sees me as a target and is bearing down on me even faster.  You know, pay attention to the more immediate threat.

If they want to pretend that I’m the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal — that if they can’t see me, then I can’t see them, and thus they can’t be hit by the Ravenous Bugblatter Beastmobile — then I wish they would at least be properly froopy and put towels over their heads.  It would make clean-up after they get hit that much easier.

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Updated on July 23, 2010
 

Metro Redneck (definition)

Someone who lives in the city and drives a pickup, but isn’t a contractor.

Back in 1999, I switched jobs and started working in downtown Menlo Park, CA (an upscale part of the Bay Area).  One day, as I walked from the office to Starbucks — across the street, maybe 100 feet — I counted on the order of 28 SUVs and pickup trucks, and thus created this phrase.

Today, I see an increasing number of Cadillac Escalade EXT — Cadillac pickups!  If there was ever a pickup truck whose bed will never ever be used for hauling lumber back from Home Depot, this would be it.  Über Metro Redneck: the pickup truck as a status symbol.

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Updated on October 10, 2000

Updated on July 7, 2004

Merged duplicate items on May 11, 2011