I wish that scooter still worked.

I was riding dirty on my scooter, Reggie, the other day, and Reggie is not endowed with all the awesome rapid acceleration powers of your average car.

me and Reg circa July 2006

It's not a huge difference, it's just like, when I'm sitting at a stoplight with other cars, they'll get going at a better pace more quickly than I can when the light turns green. It might be a slight annoyance for the more gas-pedal happy driver behind me, but I'm not exactly holding up traffic when everyone is just accelerating to get to the next red light 500 feet ahead.
So this big stupid tan SUV was behind me the other night, and they were stuck behind me for a stretch cause of turning and lanes and junk. Finally it was able to pass me and the driver craned his neck around to give me some really dirty looks because I was not going fast enough to enable him to race to be the first one to arrive at the next red light.
I almost felt concerned for a moment, but then I remembered that he's supporting terrorists and I'm not since he drives a vehicle that probably uses about $70 worth of gas every week or two, whereas I drive a vehicle that uses, oh, $3 worth of gas, and that gas comes mostly from countries that are mostly run by terrorist groups, so by using so much gas unnecessarily when he could've bought a station wagon, or God forbid, a sedan (my parents made it work with 4 kids!), he's sending a bunch of extra money to those countries where the terrorists get to keep it. So screw you, SUV guy! I wish you would've suddenly and dangerously swung your car around in front of me, blocking me and forcing me to stop so you could yell at me about how you're not going to get home in time for sunday night football (wrong season? I don't know) or whatever because I would've totally let you have it. You think I'm being selfish, driving my little scooter, not going 20 miles over the speed limit on State Street, regardless of the other cars on the road? I'll tell you what selfish is, you in your macho SPORT UTILITY vehicle that you drive to the GROCERY STORE every other day.
Anyway, enough ranting for now. Just to clarify, I know that it's not possible for everyone to drive scooters since some people have legitimate needs to haul big stuff and other human beings and whatnot, but even so, very few of those people have hauling needs that merit a 16 mpg monstrosity.

originally posted 8/1/06