WhooHoo! A new personal best: 93.47 miles per gallon!

[Richard Steele]

As some of you already know (Since I mention it every chance I get)
my Sweetie's entire family chipped in to get me a single present last Xmas:
a Honda scooter.

I've put 270 miles on it since then, and I'm getting comfortable
enough that I've stopped using my ENTIRE brain to be afraid of cars,
and have been able spend a small amount of my attention maximizing
my mileage over the last 2 weeks.

I've been riding the same route to my "shop space" where I'm working
on my current , so I know the streets and traffic patterns pretty well now.

I was averaging about 80mpg previously, riding randomly.
But I've instituted a few new ideas, now that I know the terrain:

On the roughest streets, I leave off of the throttle and zig-zag
through the potholes instead of braking and accelerating 10 times.

When there's no one behind me, I accelerate gently from stop signs,
run 5mph below the speed limit, and COAST down hills.

On flat streets, I've discovered that "half throttle" gets me up
to 30 miles an hour only 2 seconds slower than FULL throttle,
so I only use "full throttle" when there's a car behind me who
might want to get up to 30 in under 15 seconds...

I filled up this morning, noted my odometer reading and gallons pumped
as always; when I got home and did the math: WOW!

I was blown away by the difference. I was averaging 80mpg, and hoping
that my new scootin' regimen might have bumped it to 85.

But it was 93! Almost 93 and a half!

I put 56 miles on my little scooty-puff, and it cost me $1.94 to do it.
($1.94 worth of PREMIUM even, not regular!)

I'm just so THRILLED, I had to tell somebody. Thanks for listening! :hug:

Richard

[semillama]

1. that's awesome

Plus, scooters are fun.

[Richard Steele]

2. They really are FUN. I'm loving this thing like I was six years old!

Back when I was a kid in Grade School, my uncles (dad's youngest brothers)
were teenagers, and they had a "mini bike".

It was the same "mini bike" that everyone had back in the mid-70s;
you'd order the frame and plans from that ad in the back of a comic book,
then scrounge up an upright Briggs&Stratton engine and some wheelbarrow tires, and
VIOLA:


I was never allowed to ride it myself; I had to be a passenger,
because I was so small., and my teenage uncles were...well, teenagers.
But now- HA! Now, I'm not only the Mini-Bike DRIVER, I have a miniBike
that puts that one to shame and I'm legally riding it in TRAFFIC!

The "kid in me" is very content these days, I tellyawhut.

[eleny]

3. Congrats, Dick

That's so awesomely good on ya!



I won't tell you what I drive. But I have that thing on the dash that tells the driver how well they're doing saving fuel or not. It's those little bars that light up as you do better. It makes such a difference that the display is always on. We're retired, so there's no need to drive a lot. Between planning trips carefully and watching how I'm doing it's working out well.

But over 90 mpg? That's pure fabulosity, man!!!

[DrDan]

4. well . . .

I have over 200 miles on my Yamaha C3 - and still have a quarter of a tank - and am still only on the second gallon. I started with 1 gallon - and added a gallon at a little over 100 miles. So the break-in is helping my mileage.

[Richard Steele]

5. Cool beans, Doc! Isn't it GREAT to walk into the gas station and pay for ONE GALLON?

I actually had tried to get a C3 myself, you know.

Doing web-research to pick a scooter, most of the major 50cc models
seemed very similar in performance & quality...
The C3 stood out from the rest, due to that small amount
of extra storage space that's standard on it.

So my "wish list" had the C3 first, followed by
a 3-way tie for 2nd place.

THEN I started calling dealerships, and that was a real eye-opener.
Scooters are kinda hard to find around here. Looks like demand for
them is way ahead of supply around these parts.

Half the dealerships I called had -NO- scooters in stock, and they all
told me the same thing: They were asking the factories to send scooters
by the truckload, but only receiving a handful a month. And the few
they got always sold within 2 or 3 days.

(I had been hoping to find a USED scooter through a dealership,
to save a few $$$ but still have some warranty with it...HA!
I found ONE used scooter at a dealership 90 miles away, and they
were only knocking $200 off the "new" price.
I really wanted to deal with a business close to me,
just in case there were any problems/issues down the road.
But I only located ONE C3, an hour away on the other side of Raleigh,
one Vino in Raleigh, another dealer in Raleigh who said they MIGHT have
a C3 coming in sometime in the next week or two...
pretty slim pickings everywhere I called.

Then my Sweetie's dad called on a Friday night to say he had
stopped at a dealership 10 miles from my house that had TWO scooters
in stock. So we headed over there first thing Saturday morning.
I checked out the dealership- looked like a good operation to me.
Knowledgeable folks who were very into motorcycles, not just
a flashy showroom full of "salesmen".

So, I looked at this Metro and a red Vino.
Not much difference between the two models, but from sitting on
them both, the Vino didn't quite fit my butt as well.



And THAT'S the long boring story of how I came to be a happy
Honda Metropolitan rider.

[DrDan]

6. yeah - it was the storage and the terrific gas mileage

that sold me.

I take it to the Y quite often - and my bag with a change just fits in the storage area.

And I can get a gallon of milk and a few other little items in the area as well.

But - congrats on the new scooter. They are sure a lot of fun. Down here in Florida, however, you must watch the other drivers so carefully. I try to stay off any rode that has a speed limit of 45 or more. That means 55 to the other drivers. I can do 40 - so pretty much angers the other drivers - particularly the pick-up drivers (I drive a pick-up myself - so am not generalizing about them). I have been given the finger, sworn at, honked at. The worst, however, is being tailgated.

Oh well - I try to avoid these jerks.

[Richard Steele]

7. Yeah, I know just what you mean about avoiding jerks in cars.

I never had any illusions about taking this scooter out on the highways;
I planned to use it to putt-putt around inside the Durham city limits,
where all the streets have 20 to 35 mph speed limits.

I thought I could take the same routes I always took, to get around town...

But I learned real quick that, on the larger streets, those "35 mph"
signs mean "bumper to bumper at 45 or 50 mph" to the folks in cars!
And the folks in cars get MAD when my scooter takes a few seconds
longer to get up to 35mph than their car does.

And folks in cars seem to have some EGO problems with following a scooter- I've twice
had cars illegally (and recklessly) pass me on the left while I was doing the speed limit
on a quiet residential street near my house...that NEVER happened once
in the thousands of times that I traversed that street in a CAR!

So, (and I consider this an unexpected BONUS), I've been learning
new ways to get around this little city.
Learning the hours that the "main thoroughfares"
are empty, and learning how to get around via "side streets"
when they're full of impatient 4-wheel commuters.

These last three months on my scooter, I've seen as much of Durham
as I ever saw out any car window in the six years previous.

It's a good thing.