This summer has become the summer of 2-wheeled vehicles for me and my circle of friends. When Adam moved out here a year ago, he decided he only needed a scooter to get to work and back, and that he and Carolyn didn’t need a second 4-wheeled vehicle. Our great friend Pug, has been a scooter enthusiast for as long as I’ve really known him, and has converted to rolling on 2 wheels pretty much exclusively for a WHILE, long before the scooter craze caught on lately. He’s got a scooter centric blog and proves that you can do a LOT of things on a scoot including bring multiple surf-boards to the beach with you. Then there is Toby, who found a SWEET old school Enduro 125cc bike to ride around his new SoCal neighborhood. Adam and I also took the California Motorcycle safety class a few weeks ago, so we’ll have our Motorcycle licenses and a break on Scooter/Motorcyle insurance. Obviously gas prices have been a big part of this, the “22-mile-each-way” commute to my new job will be a lot cheaper on a scooter than in my car.

So a couple of weeks ago, to really put to 2-wheeled lifestyle to the test I decided to ride Adam’s scoot 100 miles to Oceanside, CA from North Hollywood to visit Pug and see the Tigers play the Padres. The ride down was an adventure, complete with a few wrong turns and attempts to take closed roads, and I eventually had to use the freeway. In the end though, it was great and round trip it was less than 2.5 gallons to go over 200 miles! The trip home was much easier too and took less than 2 hours and 45 minutes, on surface streets!

It went so well, I bought my own scooter. A Lance Venice 150cc. A sweet little Retro-Styled freeway legal scoot that I absolutely love. I’ve been using a new iPhone App called AccuFuel (which you can download on your iPhone or with iTunes by clicking here) to track my mileage and as of today, I am getting 81MPG without tuning it or anything, that’s “out-of-the-box”. Sorry for the generic PR photo of the bike, but attached is my last MPG figures from AccuFuel. I promise to post a “real” picture of my scoot soon!