Endorsing your sport

Reader Stephen alerts us to this video, which shows part of the motorcycle endorsement skills test administered by the Washington state Department of Licensing.

Salad dressing for the slide

I’m always happy to discover a Web site with a link to Scootin’ Old Skool. I was particularly happy to discover Seattle Weekly including this journal in their blogroll (and no, I didn’t ask them to).

But something caught my eye the other day—I noticed a whole bunch of traffic from a site called Scoot Crash.

If your head’s only worth 10 dollars…

With arrival of spring (technically, anyway) some of you might be thinking about a new helmet. The debate rages—full-face vs. open, Snell-approved vs. DoT.

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

Climbing the windward side of the high-level West Seattle Bridge, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Dust devils swirled across the pavment. Dust devils born of the sand that got dumped on the bridge during  Snopocalypse ‘08, which is mostly piled up on the shoulder-like verges of the pavement. Strong, gusty winds from the south were blowing the sand—and the GTS.

It’s scooter time

While tonight’s weather forecast—snow showers!—may have many wondering if it really is spring, the Vernal Equinox did in fact occur last Thursday (Wednesday for those in the Pacific time zone). Springtime often puts thoughts of scooters in peoples’ minds. That, and $4/gal. gas.

There will soon be stories in the media about scooters and scooter ownership, but the best one you can read and share is this MSNBC article by Denise Ono. Be sure to read all four parts.

Denise is a friend, longtime Vespa Club of Seattle member, and longer-time scooterist, having acquired her first scooter (a 1976 Vespa 90) in 1982. Along with a newly-acquired ‘80 Vespa 100 Sport, you’ll find a pale green ET4, a ‘68 Lambretta Starstream (sadly, not running) and a Triumph Bonneville in her garage. And a bunch of guitars in her rec room…

Seattle Scooter Forum: Seattle Channel video

If you weren’t able to attend the recent Seattle Scooter Forum at City Hall, no worries. The entire event was recorded by the Seattle Channel (Comcast channel 21). Click here to see it (WordPress.com doesn’t allow embedding of any video other than YouTube and MySpace). Please note the video is almost two hours long and you’ll need the RealPlayer browser plugin to see it…

Oh, that’s why

On Friday, all the gas stations that had been selling regular for $2.979 had bumped the price up to $3.259. Huh? Somebody in the Middle East sneeze?

No, but there were other reasons the price of crude closed a penny above $100. Venezuela threatening to cut us off. A refinery in Texas blows up. Stuff like that.

The PX will take 1.75 gallons if I fill up when the low-fuel light comes on. I figure, no matter how bad things get, it should still be possible to scrounge up that much gas…