[culcune]

Nice! My first encounter with a scooter was 30 years ago. My good friend at the time got a Honda Spree to get him to high school and back and to my house, etc. We lived in Northridge (my parents still do), at the edge of the San Fernando Valley, so my earlier teen years were spent on ten speeds riding uphill for a few miles, which would get pretty hot in the summers. The only upside was my friends all had swimming pools, so you can imagine being drenched in sweat, riding the last few blocks--uphill, only to be able to jump into a refreshing pool. Downhill was quite fun, too...

Back to the Spree--I think it was the most cooooolest thing having something so small with all the street equipment able to take you pretty much anywhere especially since you only needed to be 15 and have a driver's permit at the time. My friend would occasionally play with the exhaust, and it was funny to hear a little 2-stroke screaming up and down the street.

Over the next year or so, we got driver's licenses, although my friend was kind of 'naughty' and did not. My friend figured out the perfect balance point, and once he initially pulled up the front end, could drag his feet in a riding wheelie (not a real wheelie, per se) indefinitely. I once measured a mile and a half of him riding a "wheelie" following in my car. Even with all of us having licenses, it was still a really cool feeling of freedom the idea of a small-engined scooter.