After a brief encounter with actual fall weather we’re back to what passes for normal here in the Duke City — heat and homicide.
Field Marshal Turkish von Turkenstein (commander, 1st Feline Home Defense Regiment) returned to his favored observation post upon the battlements, to wit, the ledge of our bedroom window.
His adjutant, Miss Mia Sopaipilla, has been shifting among various cozy spots — atop one of the Twin Towers, across a sun-splashed stretch of carpet next to the living-room coffee table, near the foot of the bed — and sometimes burrows under the covers, where she adopts her alter ego of Lumpy the Bedbug.
A fella has to be careful where he sits on the bed when Lumpy’s in residence.
I was able to run in shorts and a T-shirt by 9:30 or thereabouts, chatted productively with a local bicycle retailer (road bikes are out, mountain bikes are in), and late in the day decided to take the Vespa for a spin to charge the battery and keep its vital fluids circulating.
The highlight of the day may have been this little news nugget, from my old hometown of Greality, Colorado. As I sez to one of my old UNC bros, I sez, ’tis often that we were crazed on the auld L-S-Dizzy Back in the Day®, but ne’er e’er did we try to bite a constable in the cojones. We were hopin’ for a nip at the coeds so.
Mad Blog Media 
Vespa! Nothing else like it on two wheels. The Japanese have tried to copy it, but it just ain’t the same.
A new touring bike?
https://www.vespa.com/us_EN/vespa-models/primavera/primavera-50.html#
That little sucker is pretty, innit? Affordable, too. Also, I believe my 2008 was the last of the carbureted models. I think they’re all fuel injected now … save for the new electric edition. Hoo-ha.
I saw those in the window of our local Vespa dealer. Now I wish the Italians would offer some serious cash/discount to get the stinky 2-stroke ones off the road and replaced by these.
The poor off-the-line acceleration and top-end speed (about 30 mph) makes the electric Vespa impractical for our part of town, alas.
So does the price: $7,499. Hijo, madre. Cheaper than a car, to be sure; but when you can get a gas-burning 50cc Primavera for $3,999 or a cute lil’ 125cc Honda Super Cub for $3,649, well. …
And leave us not forget the stylish Honda Metropolitan, which looks like a Vespa someone left overlong in a hot dryer. For you, just $2,499, and all of 179 pounds ready to ride. A friend in Boulder has one of these and loves it.
Or how about a Yamaha e-bike? The CrossConnect goes $2,900 for nine-speed Sora and Shimano hydro discs. It weighs nearly 50 pounds, though, so keep that battery charged. You don’t wanna pedal the powerless fucker up Tramway in the 34×30.
Since I would have to get a motorcycle endorsement on my license for the 50cc model, the 150 Primavera would make more sense for the roads around here. Even in town, the main bypasses have a speed limit of 45 mph. But, if the 50 cc model can do 35 mph without strain, I could just plan my route to stay on the surface streets. The Primavera touring model, with racks front and back, is really neat. You could hang the panniers you already have vertically on those racks, I think.
That green Primavera 150 Touring MY20 is a nice-looking machine, for sure. I haven’t needed a motorcycle endorsement for the LX50 in Colorado or New Mexico, but I would if I stepped up to the 150.
Frankly, it would be nice to have the extra zip in Foothills traffic. These people are all insane.
Plus it has larger diameter wheels (12 inch) than the 50. Smoother ride on shitty roads and probably safer when it comes to potholes or large cracks.
If all my scooting around was in Fanta Se, I might opt for one of these. Trouble is, they are useless on the highway, such as going up to Bombtown. And frankly, unless I am headed down to the community college or somewhere that far away, the beauty of Fanta Se is that nothing is more than about three miles away, which is decent biking distance. An e-bike with a solar array on the roof (since so much of our e-bikes in New Mexico are actually coal-powered), as last resort, makes more sense than yet another gas burner.
Perhaps Vespa’s waiting for a subsidy for the electric version? Odd the acceleration is slow as the instant torque of the electric motor is supposed to be a feature, not a bug. Here in Italy the speed you “need” in the USA is not required, anywhere these things are going is full of slow traffic.
I can usually get somewhere faster on my old-timey pedal bicycle than someone in a car if you factor in the entire ordeal: walking out to where the car’s parked, extracting it from said parking space, sitting in traffic, finding another parking space and finally getting out and walking to wherever you’re going vs yours truly pushing his shopping bike out the shop door, riding to wherever and locking the thing up right in front! As they say here: FACILE (fah-chee-lay, meaning easy)
Took the BMW to work this morning. Not bad, except down by the Otowi Bridge the temp dropped to 36 deg F.
I bet it did. I had the arm warmers on at 11 a.m.
Geez, I’m still riding in the lightest mesh jerseys I have, sort of hoping it’ll cool down soon, though it’s nice enough at night already to sleep with the windows open.
Nugget. Heh heh heh …
Did he quit yet?
In case you missed it, General Mattis is speaking up.