Scooter Sunday #12

There’s something different about this week’s Scooter Sunday. Can you spot what’s missing from the photo below?

no scooter?

Yep. No scooter. And it’s not in it’s shed, either. Let me tell you a sad tale. No, it’s stolen not that sad. But if you know how much I love my scooter, you may need a tissue.

Time for a Check Up

So last week, I took my scooter in for it’s 1200 mile check up. I did the 600 mile check up last year and want to keep this as properly maintained as I can. With the 4th of July weekend backlog the service department had on ATVs and motorcycles, it took almost two days for them to complete the work on my scooter.

1200 miles
Time for regular maintenance

Thursday, I got a call around noon that my scooter was ready. I left work, drove to Honda World in Sandy, parked my car, paid my bill, hop on my scooter and ride.

Not Quite Right

As I’m driving down the road, something seems different. I notice the brakes are a bit tightened up, but that’s always the adjustments they do. I get within half a mile from home, and the scooter slows down to under 10 mph. I can’t go any faster. I stop the scooter, get off and notice smoke coming from the front wheel.

that dark brown stuff is not good
That dark brown icky stuff is not normal

I get back on, start it up and finish riding the block to my house. As I was pulling into my driveway, I saw that the speedometer was not working. I’m fucking pissed. I spent two days without my scooter, and now there’s something seriously wrong. I call up the service department and they tell me to drive it back down to them.

I try to push the scooter and can’t. The front wheel is locked tight and won’t move. I go into the house and get a wrench and loosen up the front brake. It moves! It then occurs to me what happened: they tightened the front brakes way more than they should have. And the heat from the brakes must have melted the speedometer part inside the front wheel. Grease is now dripping down on the ground. Getting more pissed off by the minute. I grab some towels to clean up the grease and make sure the scooter is operational and drive it back down to the service guys.

They take it in the shop and make the exact same assessment that I did 15 minutes earlier. They apologize and tell me it’s a week to order a new speedometer cable and related parts. They are covering all of it because they fucked up and should have road tested it. But at this point, I just want to make sure it’s fixed right so I can enjoy my rides again. With the weather nice and gas at $4.20 a gallon, I am missing my scooter a lot right now.

4th of July

With the sadness surrounding my scooter, there’s only two things that can help take my mind off of this: fireworks and alcohol. Now I know what you are thinking: you should not mix those two as dangerous things can happen when drunk people are running around yelling “Woo Hoo!” while holding a BBQ lighter and a brick of firecrackers. But there were no fireworks allowed at Bear Lake. So it was just alcohol.

me in the lake
80% sober at the time this photo was taken

Seriously though, we had lots of fun. Our good friends Kris & Karen and Jaime & Ryan invited us. There were a few boats, which we went out on the lake the next day. For the almost 30 hours we were there, it did wonders for taking my mind off my scooter.

So hopefully, by next week’s Scooter Sunday, I’ll have my scooter back and can be back on the road having fun and saving gas.

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