Scootatime, It's scootatime

My boyfriend stumbled upon a forum that I thought might be useful to those of you out there looking to repair your own scooters, or upgrade them. It's called Scootertime.net and it has full manuals on many makes and models of scooters available for free in pdf form. No more begging a dealer to get you one or paying for it.


It also has a virtual garage where you can share mechanical information and pictures of your scooter as well as get tips from other riders.

It also has gear reviews by other riders. It's technically a forum so you can seek out help or information that's not already on there by registering and leaving a post.

Frozen to a motorbike

A springtime trip to Longwood Gardens ended with near hypothermia after my boyfriend and I didn't take into account the temperature had dropped greatly from the day before.
I should've said "Turn around" when he asked me about half a mile from home if I thought it was too cold riding the bike. A cold front had moved in and the temperature was more than 20 degrees cooler than the day before.
It's easy to forget, esp. early in the season, that riding makes the air temp. feel different than if you are just walking. While it felt like 60 for someone standing on the street corner, to us it was like 45, and that was at noon.
We had to make an emergency stop at a hardware store on the way down so my boyfriend could get a sweatshirt to keep from freezing to death. You don't want to be too cold while riding cause it affects your senses, and we were driving through some dangerous traffic areas (Route 100 and 30).
We got to Longwood and warmed up a bit in the Conservatory before realizing it was getting rather dark and stormy looking above. We tried to race it home, but the temp. had dipped to 50 and my teeth were chattering. (Mind you I wasn't on the scooter, I was riding two-up on his bike and even with him acting as wind block, I was freezing.)
We attempted to stop and eat somewhere as we thought it would warm us up and allow rush hour traffic to clear out, but no luck. Friday in Chester County and everyone eats out.
So we endured the windy, cold weather and headed north to Pottstown.
The wind was really kicking up and at one point I thought we'd get swept off the road by the gusts. My boyfriend and I both leaned when a large gust came breezing across a wide open field and I wondered if we could make it home without crashing from shear exhaustion. But we got there, unfortunately, I had forgotten my keys inside the house and we were stuck shivering outside until we found a neighbor with a ladder that could get us in a 2nd story window.
I believe it took two hours for my body to stop shivering.

Lesson: If you are going out, always be prepared. We would've fared better if we'd had thermal underwear in the luggage on the bike. At least my boyfriend had his gloves and a balaclava.