Really save on gas

A while back my friend and fellow Chetak owner, Dave Cicco, told me about these guys in Asia that were mounting lawnmower engines onto their bicycles.
I looked into it for the fun of it and found out that you can buy these kits for a standard bicycle for well under $1,000.  Seems like the perfect vehicle for college students living in a college town, like my college experience at Humboldt State University.

I love the miles per gallon I get on my Bajaj Chetak, but without a doubt something with a small displacement like this would give even more bang for the buck at the pump.
I was quite intrigued when I finally saw one these bike with a engine kit mounted to it and made sure to take a lot of pictures so you guys could check it out too.  Though it's nothing to do with Bajaj, it's pretty damn interesting.

Photos taken from the Nihonmachi Festival in Japantown (San Francisco) 2008.

San Francisco commuter

My wife commuted to work in San Francisco on her scooter (or mine pictured here). She felt pretty darn safe scooting in SF and was very happy with the convenience of it, especially with parking. Without a doubt, in a city it's best to ride a utilitarian bike or a beater, because others will not care for your baby. For my and wife and me, our Chetaks are our utilitarian vehicles. Our other scoots are for "special occasions".

Scooter Camping Stove

Note: The stove top fits over the fuel/burner section and is the size of a large soup can in your scooter. You can see how it slips over the top of itself.
Unless your a hardcore backpacker, you probably don't have a hardcore backpack stove and you probably don't want to shell out the cash for a super high-end one, but you should enough to get one that will last and also runs on multiple fuels -- even the gas from your scooter. My dad owns the stove picture above. It's a "Optimus SVEA 1-2-3". He is a backpacker and his college buddy who backpacks with him bought the same stove back in 1970 and the stove still works perfectly and the design has changed very little. It's a solid little stove. You can buy it for under $80 brand new and under $50 used.
If you want to live the high life while camping, you can also buy an espresso maker, like this one pictured above.

In my scooter camping slideshows you will see that I have a different stove and espresso maker. My maker is cheaper and less hardy. You can buy mine fore a few bucks at Ross or Marshalls. My stove is more complicated than my dads and costs me about $70, but I also had to buy a fuel tank to use with and it takes up more space; therefore I recommend the Optius SVEA 1-2-3. If you have a Coleman Outlet store or similar you may luck out -- I once saw a similar stove to the Optimus for $20 refurbished there and picked it up for a friend. That was a bargain.

Moving your scooter with your house

I'm a huge fan of Penske trucks when I make a move and I used one each time my family and I moved from coast to coast. On our move back West we rented a 26 ft truck (largest available) and a trailer for a car. We had to put all of our belongings in the truck, including three fully assembled scooters and my Lambretta in boxes. We had to leave a lot behind, some of value, but the scoots were priority. While I felt safer having the scooters in a covered truck for the 2,800 mile drive my big concern was the fact that there are NO tie down straps in these trucks. You are not allowed to change the truck in any way without it co$ting you.
Above, we're unloading the scooters in San Francisco. My original thought was to use three skids and strap the scooters to them and then strap them in place, but my father-in-law had a far superior idea.
He suggested that we buy a star wrench (like an allen wrench) and remove the screws from the floor and replace them with eye hooks, washers, a lock washer, and a nut -- all of which is a hair smaller than the threaded hole in the frame of the truck. It was so easy.

My father-in-law also built rear wheel chucks out of the scrap 2x4s from Home Depot. The idea being that there would be no forward/side movement of the rear end. We strapped down the scooters using Canyon Dancers around all three handle bars (my preferred method). This method worked very well.

Being anal, I kept the cowls and glove box of the SS180 wrapped up the cab of the truck with me for added safety.

This truck was the Vespa's home for nearly a week. Sadly, I forgot the camera to take a picture of the scooter our 10x25 ft storage unit as that was her temporary home for a few months.

Congrats to the blog . . . over 26,000 visits in one years ten months.