Can You Ride a Scooter?

It is hard for a motorcyclist of the male persuasion to imagine what it is like to have a scooter. Now that Mary Ann has the Burgman 400, and she lets me ride it when I want to, it is time to get these ideas onto the internet.

The scooters are competent enough, but they have a less "macho" image than motorcycles. Can you tell before buying one if this is important to you? Picture this: Your male friends have come over for a beer to watch the hockey game on TV. While they are having a beer, you are having a "Pinot Noir". Can you handle that? Be honest.

Another characteristic of scooters is that they have no clutch or gears. Their progress happens without the total control that you would have over a motorcycle with the manually adjusted gearbox and clutch. Again, you need to imagine how you will feel in this situation. I'm going to use a TV analogy again. You and your wife (or anyone of the female persuasion) are settling in to watch some TV, now hand over the remote control to her and try some channel surfing. One the plus side, you will not get cramps in your thumb and callouses on your fingers from flicking between 4 shows that you are watching simultaneously. On the minus side, things will not happen exactly when or where you would like. For example, what's on TV suddenly gets interesting, then *click" "Hey go back to that one!!!" "Sorry, where was that again?" "Never mind it's too late now." Just as a note, if you find yourself at a red light beside a potential drag race opponent, do not rev the throttle or Ms. automatic clutch will launch you into the intersection immediately. This is another part of the "Non-macho" image mentioned earlier.

It's too bad scooters do not look tough, but then again there are advantages to "cute". Run over a pedestrian on your Harley chopper, and you will get the evil eye. Run them over with a Vespa, and the pedestrian will say "Sorry for stepping in front of you." Also women of normal repute are more likely to ask for a ride on a cute scooter.

Is there anything you can do to compensate for the Burgmans' unmanly attributes? What I would love is a machine that can go back and forth from a cute machine to a macho machine. It would neat if a flick of a button could do any of these things:
1. Go into manual gear shifting mode, and more importantly, let you rev the engine at a red light, and do a wheelie off the line.
2. Louder exhaust with a manual control, where you can just open an exhaust door and let it roar.
3. Retracting the windshield and rear fender.
4. A more sportbike like riding position (handlebars lower and further forward, feet in typical rearset position, Which should be easy with no foot controls to move.)

Some other things you could do with your riding outfit to mitigate the problem. Wearing camouflage riding pants and surplus army boots which is actually typical attire for young moped club members. So is an army surplus parka.

On the scooter itself, pick a paint colour that is more muted and less flowery. Silver, white, black, olive drab, sand brown, or even camouflage colour schemes would help avoid the worst of the cuteness. You shouldn't need to mount a rocket launcher for people to get the idea. Also, maybe remove some of the body panels and give it a more mechanical look. That would make it easier to service, too. The down side is that the more macho the bike, the less likely people are to believe it's your girlfriend's that you are testing after stripping down the transmission. Either way, it's your call.