It’s time for another edition of Scooter Sunday, back in Salt Lake this weekend, celebrating Labor Day [a national holiday here in the states]. Have I really done 20 of these so far?

Riding Days

I’m doing all I can to ride my scooter as much as I can before Utah’s weather turns too cold to ride. If past years have shown any sort of pattern, there will be various good weather days until the first week of November that will be considered scooter friendly.

Park The Car

It will be one week tomorrow (Monday) that I have not driven my car. The car has sat in the driveway for seven days [I did have to go start it today so I don't go out to a drained battery the next time I need it]. I kind of miss driving it, mostly for the Sirius radio I have installed, so I can listen to the commercial-free music channels and Howard Stern. But I have all winter to listen. For now, it’s scooter time.

“Don’t forget, I can hold more than one passenger”
 
 
Scooter Storage

As some of my Twitter posts have mentioned, I use my scooter for small trips to the store and other errands, as long as I keep my list to items that can fit under the seat.

Ready for the goods

As you can see, there’s some decent room in there.

I wear my helmet almost every time I ride. For short rides to go get air in my tires or to run over to my step daughter’s house, I sometimes leave the helmet off, but that is rare.

Got to have the helmet. Don’t want to be an “organ donor”
 
 
Food Run

As for my errands, once the helmet is on my head, it leaves a decent amount of room for various grocery items. As you can tell, I can fit more than just one bottle of Vitamin Water in the seat. In fact, I’ve had as many as 4 bottles, plus a few smaller grocery items like yogurt and fruit. I try not to pack too much in there, but I fit what I can. What doesn’t fit, gets put in a plastic bag and fits between my feet on the floor board.

Vitamin Water for the day, Club Soda and Tonic for drinks at night

Even last minute requests from my wife’s five year old granddaughter fit just fine.

I bought them for my wife’s granddaughter… really, I did

Smaller fruits like bananas and strawberries have room, but I had a request from my wife to get a watermelon on my way home from work. She thought I had my car. But it was really no trouble. Just had to find one that was the right fit.

Yep.. that’s a watermelon

And a great fit. Amazing, huh?

 
Feline Goodness

Even the cat wanted to get in on the game. I seriously doubt she wanted a ride since she never leaves the yard.

WARNING: Do not store internally
 
 
Useful, and Kick Ass Mileage, too

Not just fun to ride, but practical for those short trips to the store for a few items. And with another 106 mpg from my last tank, it really is cheap to run an errand or two.

In last week’s Scooter Sunday comments, Dave2 mentioned how my scooter had been “oddly absent from Scooter Sundays as of late…” And he is right, albeit partially.

Scooter Sunday #17 was a recap of my vacation in Park City, with no scooter coverage at all.

For Scooter Sunday #16, I was on vacation that week, where my scooter remained parked in the shed while I updated my fun time at a concert and the start of my week off in Park City.

Looking at previous posts, there was Scooter Sunday #15 where I raved about my gas mileage I am getting, compared to my car. And then the posts for Scooter Sunday #12, #13 and #14 covered the saga of how the dealer broke my scooter, and it’s glorious [but marred] return.

So while the most recent Scooter Sundays were lacking in scooter coverage, I will do what I can to refocus coverage back on the scooter, at least until the end of the riding season, which I hope to extend well into October.

Speaking of…

I filled up my scooter’s gas tank this last week. The cost was $4.17 for exactly one gallon. It’s obvious that the Honda dealer did some good with my scooter when they did the regular maintenance on it. Either that or it’s broken in now that it’s been driven over 1,400 miles. Regardless what happened, I ended up getting 106 mpg… three more miles per gallon than last tank. I doubt it will get any better than this, but I’m just amazed at how lean it is on fuel [it helps that it doesn't go over 45mph]. And of course it’s still so fun to ride, getting looks from everyone, including fellow scooter riders.

Long Rides

Last night’s ride was pretty long. My friend had a party at his house. He doesn’t live too far away, but it’s at least five miles from my house. And five miles is actually a decent distance on a scooter. Since this was a drinking party, I stopped at the grocery store to get a couple bags of ice. One bag fit into the seat of my scooter and the other bag laid on the floorboard between my feet.

Then a couple of hours into the party, we ran out of few drink ingredients. Since I wasn’t at a state of inebriation that hindered my ability to drive, I offered to run down to the store to pick up the items. The ride home at 1:30am [I was mostly sober by then] was not bad. I brought my windbreaker with me, since the temperature gets chilly at night. Plus with hardly any cars on the road at that time, it made for a pleasant ride home. Can I say again how much I love my scooter. Oh yeah.

Breaking Dawn

The popularity of this book series by Stephanie Meyer is incredible. Older teens and adults of every age have snapped up all of these books, including the latest and final part “Breaking Dawn”. My wife just borrowed the first three books from a friend and will start reading them. I wouldn’t mind reading them, even though it takes me forever to get through a book. I love to read and as a budding author, I’ve got a vested interest in these books that consume the interest of a collective general audience.

Plus, as my daughter told me, there is a movie coming out, based on the first book “Twilight”, which just got moved up by three weeks to open on November 21st, 2008. Let’s see if I can read the first book by then, so I don’t sit in the theater scratching my head while everyone around me is in tune with the plot.

Next Week on Scooter Sunday

Next week, Scooter Sunday will be posted late due to my trip to San Francisco. If it all works out like I hope it will, I’ll have something different to post, which will involve scooters. Stay tuned.

Welcome to another edition of Scooter Sunday.

Efficient

Not a day went by that I wasn’t on my scooter. Which means that my car was parked most of the time [except for the days my wife took it to work instead of her truck]. The scooter holds just over a gallon of gas. When I figured my mileage last Thursday, I had ridden 110 miles since the last time I filled up [which was the previous Thursday]. I added 1.07 gallons to the tank. Doing the math, that’s 103 miles per gallon. My car, at best, gets 30 in the city. I normally use mid-grade in the scooter, which is $4.27 a gallon at this time. Unless gas really goes up, it will cost me about $5 a week to fill my scooter. The goal is to only have to fill the tank in my car once a month [which is now $55 per tank]. The weather should be nice through most of September to keep riding my scooter, and part way into October. Not only is that efficient, but it’s also saving me a decent amount of money on gas. Woo Hoo!

The Final Days

Mama cat – just a few weeks ago

Since Friday morning, we have been on cat watch. Our oldest cat, Mama [20 years old last month], has stopped eating and just lays around. It is now Sunday morning and she is still with us, but the time is fading. She has trouble getting up and will lay in the grass for hours without moving. She does not react to cat treats, tuna, milk or lunch meat. We check on her every hour or so, with the exception of during the night, checking on her before we go to bed and when we get up in the morning, although I got up at 5am this morning to get a drink and went out to check her status.

She tries to drink a little bit of water, but it’s all she can do to just stand up without falling over. It is sad to watch her in this state and we know she’s not comfortable, but we are doing what we can to make her last days as good as we can.

That’s all for now

It’s a short one this week, but time with the cat is more important right now. Will post later in the week.

Welcome to another edition of Scooter Sunday

First Milestone

I normally like to note certain milestones when one of my vehicles reaches a certain mileage state. It was this last Friday when I reached the first 1,000 miles on my scooter.

My goal is to only fill the gas tank in my car once a month. Which means I should put on another 1,000 miles this summer, weather permitting. Of course, if we can have more days like today, then I predict my goal will be met.

 
 
Lego Indiana Jones game pre-order
 

As a fan of the Lego video games, I decided I wanted the new Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. Just to make sure I got a copy, I rode my scooter over to the EB Games around the corner from my house and placed my $5 reserve for the game, which came with the cool shirt you see above. The game comes out this Tuesday.

I wanted the DS game, but everything I read about the DS version, sounded like the game was not the same, missing unlocked characters and modes. I didn’t want to feel like I wasn’t getting the complete game. I felt safe getting the PSP version.

 
Mojitos

Summer is approaching. And you know what that means? Well, besides the warm weather that I love and enjoy….. yes, that’s right…. MOJITOS!

Last summer, I tried a mojito for the first time. It was very, very good. I was instantly hooked. Now I wanted to try making them at home, where I can perfect this wonderful summer beverage. One of the first ingredients called for fresh mint leaves. And what do you know… we have a mint plant growing in our backyard. It’s previous use was a sleeping place for the cats. It made them smell nice, but I think I can live with smelly cats in exchange for fresh mint leaves for my mojitos.

I picked some fresh leaves, made some simple syrup and waited for the end of the day, when we had too much heat and needed to cool down.

Ahhhhhh! Tastes so good. Oh summer, how I’ve missed you. At least I know you are close and will be a regular once these wind and rain storms stop interrupting your pending three-month stay.

There you have it. Another Scooter Sunday has ended. But it will return next week for another fun-filled day of adventures.

Winters are too damn long here in Utah and I really don’t care what people say….. and let me tell you… I hear it all:

“We need the water”

“The snow is so beautiful”

“I just made a yellow snow cone”

Cold weather is not friendly to a lot of things, scooters being one of them. So when the weather gets even close to hitting 70 degrees, I start jonesing for my scooter. I’ve only had it one year, but in that year, I’ve ridden it to work and back as many times a week as I can, go for relaxing rides on smaller roads AND…. I can go almost 3 weeks on a tank of gas for BOTH my scooter and my car. And that was last summer when gas was $2.50 a gallon. Top that, Hummer owners!!

So it was no secret when I saw the weather hit close to 70 on Sunday, that I knew a scooter ride was inevitable. It was a short ride, but nonetheless, well deserved.

The ride was great… down the short hill from my house, past the Jordan River parkway, up the freeway overpass, past the Murray Golf Course, back up a bigger hill and straight down the road back home. It was about 10 minutes, but it was nice. I had been waiting for this day since the last time I rode, which was sometime in early October.

And since the weather was staying nice through Monday, I decided to extend my scooter-riding pleasure another day by leaving the car at home and riding to work.

And even though it must sit in the parking lot most of the day surrounded by ‘gas guzzlers’, it’s still out in the sunshine, knowing it’s days of regular travel are just around the corner.