Activities

After riding the scooter for 8 trips, it's quit on me. It's been going so well, too! It started so easily, and worked so well. Now it stalls whenever I try to accelerate. I can even sit on it, hold it back with my feet on the ground, and stall it by applying some throttle.

I asked the Honda Spree scooter forums what was going wrong; they told me to clean the carburetor. So this weekend I took it apart and checked on some other problems I had, too.

I've been riding The Red Devil to work for almost two weeks now.

While I hear lots of talk about scooters and motorcycles being invisible to normal drivers, I've had very little trouble. Almost everybody notices me and gives me safe space.

Oddly, all the problems I've had have been with giant trucks and SUVs. In the scariest incident, I was going 30 in a 25mph zone; the giant black SUV behind me wanted to go 40, and decided he could share the lane with me while he roared up to the red light. Doofus.

I wouldn't have decommissioned Silent E without another way to get to work. About three weeks ago, Dad sold me his motor scooter, The Red Devil.

It's a red 1995 Honda Elite SR, model number SA50. It's got a 50cc two-stroke motor, and its top speed is supposedly 30 MPH. Obviously it's not named for its performance.