Tour de Moped for November

by Jim Zeiser
(Deposit, NY, US)

I'm sure the picture of the site I rode to will look familiar but the vehicle I used won't. I decided that with the price of gas rising and the cold weather upon us I wanted something to strike back at the oil companies with.

So I outfitted one of the mopeds with a large crate in place of the rear passenger seat and took it for an extended ride to see how it would handle a trip.

First I wasn't sure how much gas it had in it since it had been about 40 miles since we last filled it and the boys had used it to run around on the grass and did some road riding.

I was amazed when it only took about sixty-six cents to fill it to the brim. From there I proceeded out to the Vegetable Stand a few miles outside of town at the easy pace of 25 mph. The moped still only has about 90 miles on it and I'm doing my best to break it in easily.

Later I'll run it wide open and see what it has in the way of real speed, but for now it runs at that speed in fourth gear very sedately.

As I was taking the picture the owner of the stand admired the bike and asked me all kinds of questions about it. As always, "how fast, what kind of mileage?". I should become a dealer. He stepped out of a pickup truck so I imagine someone on an 80 mpg anything must sound like science fiction.

The ride home was uneventful, if a trifle slow, but I felt like I was riding a miniature motorcycle and enjoying the scenery. The original purpose was to do some shopping, but I'll cover that elsewhere.

Suffice it to say, the giant box worked out great and will save a ton of gas this winter. I just have to gather up warm clothes for the really cold days. Maybe you'll see some "moped next to a snowbank" shots soon.