Scooter Tours
Burke's Garden, Virginia
Years ago, Kathy and I met a fellow rider while touring the Virginia mountains. As residents of Asheville, North Carolina, at the time, we thought one of his tales was unusually curious. It seems that the beautiful location of our city's crown jewel, the Biltmore Estate, was really tycoon George Vanderbilt's Plan B....
Long Island Scooter Tour
Long Island, in geological time, was born yesterday. Glaciers that created this 120-mile long, fish-shaped pile of rock and sand began retreating some 22,000 years ago. Sea levels rose in concert with the thaw, completely encircling the land mass 11,000 years later. Today, it's one of the most densely populated areas in America, home to more than 7.5...
North Carolina: Nags Head Revisited
Up until a few months ago I didn't have any fond memories of Eastern North Carolina. The unfavorable impressions that I retain spring from long-ago drives to Nags Head on the Outer Banks – dull, dispiriting trips taken in old, mephitic cars packed with battered musical equipment and spent musicians that rumbled through a string of tired towns...
New York Scooter Tour
Stand on a New York City subway platform in the summer and you'll know how Dante felt at the gates of Hell. Down there, beneath the melting tarmac, the air is so thick with heat it can be cut with a plastic knife. The subway cars are air-conditioned, but the platforms aren't, and when the moist air released from the cars hits the tubes and the platforms...
Florida Scooter Tour
In the grand scheme of things, February in North Carolina is not all that bad. We could ride year round, but few of us choose to do so. Our long, hot summers condition us to opt for the extra two wheels once the leaves take leave. Sure, the daytime highs usually crack 40 degrees, but like many, I use those 12 or so weeks of winter to get reacquainted...
Scooter Tour: Goin' Down Jersey
"New Jersey, Come See For Yourself" is the official slogan recently selected to encourage tourism in the Garden State, and Down Jersey, that mostly rural portion of southern New Jersey bordering the Delaware Bay, is certainly what the current crop of boosters have in mind. A land of contrasts with a culture all its own, it's made for traveling in the...
North Carolina: Slow Down, Look Around
We never stopped at South of the Border when I was a kid. Dad was one of those psycho travelers. Bladders could be emptied only when fuel tanks were filled. Motels were always dark places and I only saw them during midnight check-ins and pre-dawn check-outs. Mom was sympathetic about the long hours, but obviously she didn't share a young boy's notion...
Northwest Washington
Shelly Harper, owner of the "destination shop" Scooter Stuff, tells me "Business is great." I've stopped by her solitary store on a quiet country road close to Whatcom Lake in Northwest Washington to see what it's all about. Oddly, though, there are no other scooters parked outside with my TN'G Verona 150, just a couple of vee-twin cruisers. And Shelly's...
Piaggio X-9: Eastern Shore Maryland
It's amazing how a few years of separation can inspire a whole new outlook on things previously unnoticed. Having grown up in Annapolis, Maryland, I was aware of the region's deep historic roots. But, like most teenagers, my coming of age concerns centered on girls, parties, and bikes. The Eastern Shore was that place across the bay you had to ride...
Charleston, South Carolina
Call me crazy, but I have this firm belief that motorcycles should be on a trailer for only two reasons: mechanical issues and the absence of a license tag. If you want to ride somewhere, ride to get there. This goes for scooters too. When I told people I was planning to ride a Kymco Grandvista 250cc scooter to Charleston, SC, they looked at me funny....
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