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Orin O'Neill photo

Well, here we go—the drumbeat has reached a crescendo, the march to five-buck gasoline has surely begun.

When I left for Seattle Friday afternoon, the sign in the picture read $3.399, which is what this station (which usually has the cheapest prices in town) was charging for regular. The price you see was in effect at approximately 11:30 am PST. Oh yes, prices can change more than once a day.

As I was headed south, a fire broke out at BP’s Cherry Point refinery. That has quickly been adopted as the excuse for raising prices approximately 50 cents in the last five days. Oh, well.

In other news, SYM’s U.S. distributor Alliance/Lance Powersports today issued a statement on its Facebook page apologizing for an illustration on their Web site depicting a scantily-clad woman positioned provocatively astride a Wolf Classic 150. The illustration has since been removed, having been replaced by a picture of the bike only.

Yet again, the powersports industry shoots itself in the foot with a 7.62mm NATO round. As has been pointed out repeatedly, the Wolf 150 is a perfect choice for those who might want to make the transition from a scooter to a motorcycle but find the size and weight of most new motorcycles a deterrent. That a large number of this group of potential buyers might be women (who might, perhaps, find such illustrations offensive) seemed to have been totally lost on the folks at Lance/Alliance.

It’s also been frequently pointed out that the marketing for the Wolf Classic generally has been completely contrary to the company’s positioning of its scooters as economical, fun transportation (the people riding the scooters are even wearing helmets and riding jackets!). Y’know, it doesn’t cost that much to put on a focus group; let’s hope this turn of events will cause the industry to question some of its basic assumptions, before it’s too late.

Riding a scooter or motorcycle can beneficial for a variety of reasons, but a recent post on Motorcycleinsurance.com posits riding a motorcycle can make you smarter.

Or more precisely, it can enhance brain function. Kinda like Sudoku.

Japanese researcher Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, a noted expert on the subject of human brain function, conducted studies involving current and former motorcycle riders, and not only found definite differences in brain function between members of those groups, he also found regular motorcycle riding to have positive effects on brain function in general.

It’s not so hard to understand why—riding a scooter or motorcycle well requires considerable focus and awareness of one’s surroundings. The brain reacts by creating new synaptic paths and making use of otherwise dormant segments of the cerebral cortex.

I noticed the same thing when I was driving race cars. You have to take in and process a great deal more information on a race track than most folks would driving to work, but that carried over to driving on the street, too. And it has proven quite helpful riding a scooter.

The sun came out today, after several days of cold, rain and wind. Good thing it did. Riding around shooting pix for a post you’ll see later this week, I could feel the brain cells being replenished. Which is good, because I suck at Sudoku.