Tag: fun with a scooter

I CANNOT Make This Shit Up!

Lemme preface this post by saying that I am tired of writing my excuses reasons for not writing, so I’ll just jump right in.

Anyhoo, I swear that I cannot make this up!

I am the proud owner of 2 mobility scooters, Optimus Prime and (the newly acquired) Max. I use both of them and they each serve a purpose altho recently I discovered that Max, while a nifty lil thing, is not the most comfortable for sitting for any length of time beyond getting where I need to go, and I definitely cannot stand on him. I had to go to Jamaica at the end of September and wouldn’t you know it, I couldn’t take either. Well, Optimus was in the shop and Max is just not comfortable or “party” friendly enuf, so I really did not want to take him. So…i had to rent a scooter – UGH! Luckily tho, the shop that was handling Optimus has scooters for rent, so I got one of theirs (“unfortunately”, they only had 4 wheeled scooters which didn’t make me happy, but I got over that fast). Got it the day before I left Atlanta and we were off.

Once I landed in JA, we had to take a shuttle bus to the hotel that was 2 hours away. I had already spoken to the wedding coordinator to ensure that there would be space for me and as it turns out, it was one of the big, coach busses so I was all set. They loaded the scooter in the luggage compartment and once again…we were off! 2 hours later, the bus pulled up outside the resort, the scooter was unloaded, i jumped on, turned the key and i heard a long beep. “No worries.” I thought, “like it’s in manual mode.” I looked at the switch and realised that it in fact, was NOT in manual mode. “hmmmmm”. It was at that point, that it occurred to me that I wasn’t hearing the “something’s wrong” alert; I was actually hearing the horn. It sounded like the horn was constantly being depressed and when I looked, the actual horn button was gone – I guess it had broken off in the luggage compartment of the bus. Ah shit! this had actually happened a couple of months ago with Optimus and the only option I had was to take him in to the same shop where he was at the moment. Great! I was in Jamaica! no scooter repair anywhere!!

For the next 4 days, EVERYONE knew when I was approaching!!! I’ll bet you thought that the thing couldna been that loud. Well, you’d be wrong…shit was loud and there wasn’t a damn thing that I could do about it. Noise pollution at its finest…the only time it wasn’t blaring was when the switch was off, and I did that as much as I could, but I still had to get around. Sigh! There is some good news, I didn’t get any complaints or incredulous stares until the last night, but by then miss h’A and I were over it and we didn’t care that the woman was most annoyed, had her fingers in her ears and kept saying/shouting something to us. What was funny was that for at least 45 minutes after I got home and parked the thing, I was still hearing the beeeeeeeeeeeeep in my head. A few other friends could have sworn that they heard me in the various airports where they were connecting to get back. The other good news? Bill and John at the repair shop didn’t charge me for the rental or the broken horn – I couldn’t beat that with a bat! I’ll take the wins whenever I can 🙂

Be back soon…

Introducing Optimus Pride

Soca Scooter is no more.

he had a good 6 year run and at first, he never failed me. Alas, the time eventually came when I couldn’t rely on him any longer. It made no sense that I would be ready to bounce starter and mash gas and………nothing! he just would not move. The vexing thing is that I knew what  was wrong but the problem was that I just never knew when it would happen and the time I took him to be repaired, he worked perfectly fine. Now that I’m writing this and think back, the problem started happening a while back but somehow I was always able to get him moving again and never realised that it was actually the start of an issue so I guess it was just the end of the road this time. Anyhoo, I just couldn’t afford to take any more chances and I had to replace him.  I’ve talked bout Bumblebee here already. He is my Lamborghini…my weekend ride if u will, and driving up the road in my neighbourhood is just not his scene.  I needed another “Corolla” to handle that and all the jammin I put the things thru on a regular basis. Enter…Optimus Pride.

Optimus Pride is like a Soca Scooter2.0 and he’s a chunx bigger. He breaks apart when I have to load him up into a car and he’s low and close to the ground so I won’t feel nervous driving on a slight incline, all the while hoping with everything in me that we won’t tip over. He’s .6mph slower than SS but Bumblebee has gotten me used to the slower speed so no big deal. It’s weird though, the handles and controls are shaped differently and for some reason, there are times (more often than I’m willing to admit) when I press the control at first and we head in the wrong direction.  What the?!? Have u not been using a scooter for the past 6 years?!? It really doesn’t seem to make any sense at all,  but it is what it is. OP (not to be confused with OB 😉) also has front and back wheel suspension so his ride is nice and smooth.

his name…allyuh know u hadda indulge me.

like Soca Scooter, he’s originally red. Unlike Soca Scooter he came with alternate blue panelling that can be switched out depending on the mood of the user.  I was thinking about what to name him and I figured that maybe I could stay with the “Transformers” theme and use both colours.  Hmmmm…Optimus.  Optimus Prime is red and blue so I can switch out a few of the red panels and use the blue. “Oh self…not a bad idea at all…k, i’ll call him Optimus.” Well the problem with that was that he eh no transformer. when people see Bumblebee in action going from folded to not, he’s a transformer. Optimus doesn’t transform, he breaks down and apart…yes that bothered me (say what u will about me). A friend suggested “Optimus Pride”. Yuh see he’s a Pride scooter…that’s the brand. I thought it was perfect; staying in the “Transformers” theme without actually being a transformer. Quite clever if (by chance) u ask me 🙂

Saturday I was out on Bumblebee and someone said to me, “is that a license plate u have there?” I replied with a “hell yeah!”. I think it was Miami carnival 2013 that I had the idea to create a license plate for Soca Scooter – it was Stax3.25 (my car at the time was Stax3). There was no way that I’d know at that time that five years later, I’d be asking Asal to make Stax5.25 for me.

Optimus Pride – see the blue panel on the front wheel mud guard

Pride brand

Aye allyuh have a great week; I gone so.

Follow Me

Get the latest posts delivered to your mailbox: