My new-to-me e-scooter

 "Anything but the car" has been my mantra for decades. Regardless of the difficulty or distance, my commute and regular travels have avoided use of the car if at all possible. Mainly transit through the 1990s and 2000s, the bicycle through the 2010s, occasional use of a motorcycle after 2010, even use of the unicycle to supplement the bus commute a few times. In 2022, though, I added yet another item to the fleet, an electric scooter.

Why did I decide to purchase it? Include or discuss the test drive, the purchase, the acquisition, the ride home.

To begin:

August 3 2022: Bought myself a new toy today. Well, toy isn't the most appropriate word here. Capital expense, transportation, rolling stock, addition to the fleet. It's an electric mini-motorcycle, one of the former Scoobi scooters.

Scoobi was the electric bike rental in Pittsburgh. They are not simple e-bikes. These more resemble small motorcycles. They are strictly urban machines, 30 mph top speed, about a 30-mile range. Can rechare off a standard 120-volt outlet in a couple hours. Should be ideal for commuting, at least for getting someone from the suburban sprawl ranch house to the park & ride, right?

My plan is to use it to get to Perry park & ride in the morning, then back home later. Might try a trip to Dormont and back sometime. Out & back would get close to the 30-mile range. I'm not sure what I'd do if the battery peters out a couple miles from home. Probably walk, or phone home for a rescue. The battery is removable but weighs a ton (30 pounds, to be exact), so I'm not carrying it home if I do have to walk, though I could probably lug it a few blocks to the office to recharge there during the day. Then office to Dormont to home is well within its 30-mile range.

It comes with a luggage compartment, and as part of the purchase, the seller included a pair of decent helmets, though only one person at a time can ride it. With the spare out and the other on my head, I have space for two fully loaded bags of groceries. My work laptop also fits in it, with space for a lunch bag, too. Use of the machine to do a grocery run is an ideal application. I might not be able to load up a full grocery cart to take home, as I would with a car, so more frequent trips to pick up smaller loads would be a simple enough adaptation. For me, the store is not even a mile away, so I can chase down there in only two minutes on the scooter. 

This may accelerate running an electric line down to the carport, where it will likely live. We have already been talking about running a dedicated line for powerin the trailer, an dsome lighting in the carport. This just adds to the need. In the meantime, since we have a 50-foot extension cord running from the house to the trailer, borrowing it to charge the scooter battery for a couple hours is a simple matter. Or I can just lug the battery up to the house and charge it in the basement.

My son Gabriel has been talking about getting a driver's license for a while. I can't see him driving a car, but this machine might be right up his alley. I will have to try his two-mile on-foot commute on this scooter, though there are parts of it that assuredly would not be possible with it. There are other ways to get there, though, which the scooter could certainly traverse.

I do want to try climbing some steep hills with it, such as Federal Street, which has a 13% grade. Maybe it can traverse the Gerst Way footbridge, as well, though it would be fine if I stuck to East Street -- snippy ex-city-councilwomen notwithstanding.

In any event, now that I have it, I need to scout out parking areas with 120-volt outlets, in case I do need to do an emergency recharge. Park it, plug it in, go sit in a coffee shop for a half hour, and that might be all I need to get the rest of the way home, should I need to do that. 

From what I can see so far, it has great utility. I don't know why we don't have 10,000 of these out there!