Current Ramblings
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Vroom Vroom
Several months back, when gas started regularly hitting the $2 mark, I made a comment to my manager about transferring to the store that's actually within walking distance of me. (Well, on a nice day.) Now that's it's pulling scary shit like hitting the $2.39 mark, I decided to pursue that a little more actively. So today I was thinking about that happening sometime in the vaguely nearish future, and what that'll mean for my daily transportation needs. If I don't need to go all the way up to the northwest edge of town to work, I could do just about anything I'd need to do in my life - get to school, get groceries, get video games and CDs at small stores, go to, well, a Target at least - without having to go more than a few miles at more than 35-40mph. I started thinking about getting a small, Vespa-style scooter, not to completely replace my car, but for that 90% of my driving that would be alone on surface streets. My father's stepfather is still in charge of the family cycle shop in Alabama and Honda makes decent scooters, so I asked my mom to look into it. (Also because I don't just have that kind of money lying around and would need a loan.) He wasn't especially helpful, but she checked some things out and concluded that a small scooter wouldn't be enough. They usually only have 50cc engines, which gets you up to maybe 30mph or so. So there were two ways to go from there: a large scooter, which are never cheap enough to make up for being unbearably lame, or a small motorcycle. As FLCL-awesome as it would be to tool around on a scooter, I've always wanted to have my own motorcycle. And with the way I'm living now, it would actually be reasonable. My car's only got so much left in it at this point, so this way I can put off having to buy a new car for much longer and save money on gas, too. My mom's going to keep her eye out for a good deal on a used Honda Rebel, and then I get to learn how to use a clutch. Living in the city is awesome.
posted@10:20 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments