The Girl in the Red Sweater

I love my new scooter. I really do.

But there are a few things I would change if I had the chance. Like adding a drink holder up front.

The search for my new scooter led me to write up a list of what I would consider the perfect scooter, since nobody out there really quite seems to know how to cater to women. The Buddy was wonderful, but its problem is it really can’t go fast enough — as I mentioned in my post about the test drive, the 125cc version gets wobbly because of its itty-bitty little wheels.

So here are the features of what I consider the ultimate chick scooter:

• Water-cooled, since my air-cooled People gets really hot which is not great for the electronics I store in the underseat storage, like my camera and phone
• 29″ seat (this is important to us shorter riders!) with thick gel padding, and a fancy backrest like the Kymco Grandvista custom seat, for maximum comfort
• A mid-sized windshield to keep that wind off at high speeds
• A front pocket with a cupholder at the bottom, so drinks don’t spill (the Buddy held drinks but they could slide around and cause a mess)
• 200 to 250ccs — I don’t want to go over 70, but I want to be able to get up a hill without losing any speed…
• Under 200 pounds (not that we want to have to lift the scooter, but just in case…)
• Giant underseat storage, like the Buddy has — my People’s space is so much smaller I can’t even fit my helmet in the compartment
• A built-in trunk or saddlebags, which can be opened with the ignition key and not yet another separate key, that match the scooter perfectly and don’t have to be bought separately
• Big, easily adjustable mirrors — the Buddy’s were too small and very finnicky to adjust
• Extra-loud airhorn — the fancy International Buddies have a 139-decibel horn built in, and I really like the idea of the extra safety that implies
• 15″ tires: small enough to still be quick and fun — the whole point of riding a scooter — but big enough to be stable

Let me know if they’ve already built this scooter, because I would beg, borrow or steal to get my hands on it…

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So, my Wall of Dreams didn’t work out in the end. The November goal list finally fell off the wall a couple of weeks ago.

I decided to scale back and think about what goals I would really, truly work for. I wrote from the heart and scribbled out page after page of all the things I would like to change.

Here is what I boiled them down to:

• Feel better
• Keep track of progress toward my goals
• Learn to play the piano well enough to play at church
• Pay off the bills and save money
• Move to a place we both love
• Get our own house
• Get a new job

“Feel better” encompasses the widest array of goals. I thought that if I left one big goal out there, I could mark down almost every day that I did something toward that goal. That should boost my confidence and encourage me to do more.

Some of the things I include in “feel better”: reduce my back pain (find a better mattress so I’m not hurting my back in my sleep anymore, and get a comfortable chair at work so I’m not slouching all day), calm my upset stomach (eat better and track what foods are causing the discomfort), sleep better and stop being tired all the time (the mattress should help out here, and I need to be more aware of my acid reflux; I also want to journal and blog more to get all my worries off my mind so I don’t have bad dreams), and reduce my stress and the tension in my shoulders (do yoga more often, that better office chair ought to help the neck, and get a more fulfilling job).

The progress part is easy. I’m journaling more already, and I’m writing out the first letter of each goal and just putting a plus, minus or zero next to it to tick off what I worked toward each day. It may not actually accomplish much in and of itself, but I need my gold stars to build my confidence so I will really tackle these.

The piano part is one of those buckle-down-and-do-it things. I have a great keyboard, but I haven’t taken the time to find a piano teacher. Once we move I’ll set that up.

Bills are self-explanatory, although I must say that I’m glad we bought the boat and scooters even at the expense of higher bills. They’ve made life so much more enjoyable for the both of us.

Moving is hopefully much closer than we thought — I can’t wait to hear what that manager has to tell Hubby tomorrow!

Once we’ve moved, we can get a short little lease, and then if the place is right we can finally settle down. It would be so nice to live out of town, off by ourselves, but still be close enough to get to work and to a grocery store without a terrible commute.

The job goal is the hardest. I finally managed to sum up exactly what I need: a job that either puts me in a good position to start my own business, or else makes me so happy that I don’t even want to bother with the hassle of doing my own thing. I think I’ve finally figured out the kinds of jobs I should be looking for, and oddly enough, the Denver area has an abundance of them…

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I never realized how popular scooters are until we started riding them. There are several riding groups around town, and we managed to meet up with one this weekend.

It would have been more fun at a higher speed, but there were a couple of 50cc scooters with us, and we didn’t leave them behind. We meandered down to the lake Hubby and I usually fish at.

It was an absolutely beautiful day for a ride, despite the fact that a couple of days ago they were predicting sleet and thunderstorms.

(I still haven’t seen a thunderstorm here — it’s weird. I guess the sea breeze pushes all the clouds the same way, so they don’t bump into each other. I sure do miss them. I sleep so well and feel so energized when they’re around.)

In any case, I must say I’ll miss the beautiful scooting weather when we finally leave this place. 3/4 of the year is beautiful. But I won’t miss that 1/4 of the year when walking outside makes you feel like you are walking straight into a hairdryer…

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Top 10 things that will fit in Hubby’s scooter:

10. 100 lbs. of sand
9. Two schoolbooks and a banana
8. A head of lettuce and a bag of carrots
7. 45,000 M&Ms (no, we didn’t measure – see here)
6. 24,606 one-dollar bills (ditto)
5. 49,152 pennies (here)
4. 11 skeins of Red Heart yarn
3. 7 sock monkeys
2. One shih tzu
1. A bucket of chicken

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You didn’t really think I would be able to resist for long, did you?

Hubby’s upgrade was such a success, I started researching chick scooters right away. I think I looked up every model that wasn’t made in China, and I found that they just don’t make many models that work well for women.

For one thing, a lot of them are so heavy you have to be pretty big and strong just to make sure you don’t tip over. For another, a lot of the seats are high off the ground — and you need to be able to put your feet down when you stop.

I was convinced the Buddy 125 or 150 — in the same neat girlie size as the 50 — was going to be the winner, if only because its seat is only 29 inches off the ground. But after hearing advice from the local scooter group and test driving several models (man, that guy is good — he knew just which ones to suggest!) I found the Buddy lacking.

Yes, it made it up the hill that had my little Buddy 50 down from 45 to 37 every time, but when I got on a straight stretch and picked up a decent speed, I felt like I was whipped cream. I had to keep leaning back and forth because I felt so unstable. It was a little windy that day, but only about 5 or 6 mph. I decided I just wouldn’t feel safe riding around the hills on the little cutie.

So after trying out another chick scooter (the Kymco People 125) and feeling blah about it, the scooter guy suggested I try the “baby brother” of Hubby’s. The People S 200.

I was skeptical, since it had the same seat height as Hubby’s, but I noticed it had a smaller more girl-friendly overall size. And it weighed 100 pounds less than Hubby’s. After I rode it (only about 1/3 of the time I had tried the Buddy) I was faced with a dilemma.

Yes, the Buddy’s seat height was a great advantage, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable on the People. My only concern really was that it had less storage.

I had test ridden all three over lunch, so all afternoon I mulled over my options. Finally, I realized I would only be happy with the People. Then I had to face another kind of dilemma: which color? I almost went with the blue — my favorite color — but the scooter shop had a red demo that was several hundred dollars cheaper.

In the end it was not the price that won out, but the fact that I already had a red jacket to match. Being that the jacket cost (gulp) $150 plus tax, I really did not want to start thinking down the road “Man, I wish my jacket matched my scoot.”

I imagine the next impending purchase will be a trunk since I feel a little cheated out of storage. The Buddy sure had lots of it. The People still has the pop-up seat and even a little cubby up front, but I do miss the cupholder.

I’m sure the girls at McDonald’s will too… they sure got a kick out of it when I took the drive-thru and neatly set my orange juice and bag in the front pocket without missing a beat!

But faced with the option of drive-thru ease vs. the ability to ride those lovely winding hills I’ve been dreaming of, there’s just no comparison.

And Hubby can’t leave me in the dust anymore!

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Hubby just couldn’t take it anymore.

He felt the need… the need for speed.

Since the scooters have been working out so well, and gasoline is still so expensive, Hubby decided he would like to upgrade his scooter to something he could actually take out on the highway. 45 mph just wasn’t enough to get him to school on time.

We looked at a few different models, and the smart guy at the scooter shop brought this one out “just in case we wanted to try it.” He was right; this was much more comfortable than the others we had picked to test ride. It is a Kymco People 250 – it’s much bigger than his little Super 9, and it goes a lot faster.

The weather has been rainy and windy for the two weeks since he got the scoot. He has only gotten to ride it a couple of times, so we will have to wait and see what it will do for gas mileage. I’m sure it won’t be quite the 97 mpg the Super 9 got, but I’m also sure it won’t be anywhere near the 18 mph his SUV gets.

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