Monday, July 18, 2005

Crusing Japan

After a week of waiting, the shop had finished tuning up my new (used) scooter. 11:00 am as of yesterday I finally picked it up.


Side View


Front View, it comes with a basket in the front!


Inside the seat compartment with my helmet

It was a magnificiently beautiful day yesterday. Albeit rather hot, talk about 27 degrees but after factoring in humidity it was more like 37 degrees (celcius). I took the scooter out for a spin to the University and up the big hill to my lab. Going upwards with no effort was wonderful as opposed to breaking an exhaustive sweat everytime. I also had the chance to visit places where I never could go to on foot. I headed out to the back of the mountain crossed a bridge to another hill side and kept on going.

The bike is a 49 cc bike. Not the world's most powerful think but plenty of power to get you where you want to be. City driving speed for scooters is 30km/h but the bike is rated up to 60km/h. The bike's got a tank for 5L of fuel. The tank was partially full when I got the bike but it was really great to tell the guy to "fill 'er up" and only pay $3 for gas. Unbelievable.

The bike costed me $400 by itself, insurance about $120, licence registration $60 and a helmet for $70. In total I spent about $650 for the bike. Not bad, the funny thing is that it's 1/2 the price of my laptop!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"meep meep!"

here comes Ho!!! be careful on that thing you crazy kid!! ;D

Don't do anything I wouldn't do.... have you popped a wheelie yet? or done any burnouts on that powerful beast yet!?!

Paladiamors said...

Hey Sanders,

Haven't done anything crazy on the scooter yet. Still new at riding the things so it's going to take some getting used to. The riding's quite conservative but I am starting to get to know how it handles.

Riding on a bike going at 40km/h feels like going 60km/h easy. When driving I used to push 80km/h easy on city streets in a car that is. The feeling of wind all around you really changes the way you precieve speed. But feeling the wind on a hot summer's day is great. Just wondering how things will feel after it rains.

Wrazn said...

Oh wow! I want one!

Paladiamors said...

Greets,

If you do go for the bike, all the more power to you. Just watch out for the rain and traffic... and don't ride in the winter.

Sendai is very much like Vancouver... in that we get lots of rain over here going to get some rain gear soon. But for getting around locally and not spending all your time waiting for busses and getting to where you want to be when you want to be, it's great.

In for city driving I think the average speed is about 40km/h after including traffic lights so if you're hitting 40km/h on a scooter for riding, it isn't so bad comparatively.