Rider’s Profile – Amerivespa series: Orin O’Neill

Since Amerivespa is coming up next week (July 12 to 15), I thought that featuring American Vespa/scooter bloggers for another round of the Rider’s Profile series would be a great idea.

Amerivespa is sort of like the Vespa Attack held annually here in Manila every December. The difference is that the U.S. counterpart is hosted by a different city each year under the umbrella of the Vespa Club of America. For 2007, the host city is Seattle, Washington.

And what better way to open this series and start the ball rolling by featuring a rider based right where all these scootering action will be! Let’s get to know him and more about his participation in this year’s event.

rider’s name: Orin Joseph O’Neill
also known as: Orin
ride: 2005 blackVespa PX150; no modifications (not even a Sito Plus pipe yet)
homebase: Seattle, Washington
dayjob: computer geek
blog: Scootin’ Old Skool

more about the rider:

Bought my first scooter, a Vespa ET4, in September 2003. I had gotten a credit card bill from Shell that totaled $101.00 and decided I needed to do something, so that’s why I got the ET4. I put 11,000 miles on it in three years before trading it in on the PX 150 last October. I joined the Vespa Club of Seattle before I got the ET4, because I had never owned a scooter or motorcycle before, and wanted to meet people who had. While most Americans tend to think of scooters as precious toys, I ride mine… to work, to shop, on vacation, pretty much any place my 2005 Ford Escape would be too much vehicle for the job.

I have done many long-distance rides: last year on the ET4, I went from Seattle to Bellingham, Wash. (60 miles one way); to Centralia, Wash.(80 miles); to La Conner, Wash. (60 miles); and to Vancouver, B.C., Canada (180 miles one way, plus 200 miles in Vancouver). I rode the PX150 to Portland (200 miles one way) and to Victoria, B.C. (60 miles to Port Angeles, Wash., plus a ferry crossing) earlier this year.

more about the blogger:

I started the blog because when I had the ET4, I’d talk to so many people and find they have such outlandish ideas about what owning and riding a scooter is like. In spite of record high gas prices, Americans are, for the most part, afraid of anything on two wheels. I hope to show that riding, owning and maintaining an old-school scooter is really not difficult or dangerous, and that it’s a lot of fun, and opens you up to many new experiences.

thoughts about the upcoming Amerivespa?

The entire scooter community in Seattle is looking forward to hosting scooterists from around the U.S. and the world. I’m on the committee, so I will be helping out with various aspects of organizing and staging the event.

There are plenty of activities planned: Thursday night, there’s a cocktail cruise on Seattle’s Elliott Bay; Friday, a private show at a downtown venue headlined by Neville Staple, formerly of The Specials; Friday and Saturday, there will be several group rides leaving from Amerivespa headquarters in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood; and Sunday, there will be a ferry ride to Vashon Island for an island tour and BBQ, where at least two, and possibly four scooters, among other things, will be given away in a raffle. It’s going to be huge, and Seattle has so much to offer aside from Amerivespa activities, you just have to come if you possibly can!

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Orin will just feel right at home if ever he sets foot in Manila as his scoot (PX150) is the same as what most Vespa riders here have. The PX lineage is considered vintage (with the first model out in 1977) but personally, I could never claim that my scoot already is, since it’s a 1998 model. “Classic” has always been the more appropriate term for me, until I read how Orin referred to his…

Old Skool, I like that!

-o-
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J0HNRANA

john[dot]rana[at]gmail[dot]com