Modern Vespa

I am posting a lot today! geez!

Two questions:

1. Has anyone taken an ET2 for a "mini road trip"? I know they don't go fast enough to warrant a real road trip, but I was thinking of visiting my mom on it..and that is about 45 miles away. It would take a little over an hour to get there I suppose. Farthest you have taken your ET2?

2. Washington DC people.... I am going to be in your city for a psychobiology symposium... I will be there from November 12-15th. Is there a place I could rent a scooter for a reasonable price ? (keep in mind that your "reasonable" and what is "reasonable" to a jobless college student might be different!) Are there any places you suggest to visit? Also...anything fun going on in the city around that time, like an event I should attend?! Any DC information would be amazing, I haven't been since I was 13.

Are you going to Society For Neuroscience?

nope, I will just be there for the international society for developmental psychobiology (http://www.isdp.org/)

Is the neuroscience event at the same time?

I've never heard of any scooter rental places in DC, but if you're busting to get on two wheels while you're here, you can always go on one of the Segway tours!



Segway Safaris

Actually I got my dates a little off, it's JUST after the isdp, running from the 15th-19th. We'll be passing in the night it seems

what a bummer! what are you presenting about?

The segway things are dorky, but seriously...it is some major miles between the sights, and having wheels definitely helps. Bicycle is a darn good alternative too, though. And Mayor Fenty's got that bike share program.

If you're dead set on renting a scooters, I believe you might be out of luck. The only outfit I knew of was called "Around Town Scooters. (3280 N Fairfax Dr, Arlington, VA 22201) But I believe they have closed their doors. If I recall correctly, their rates were pretty ridiculous, and you could pretty much buy one of their cheap Chinese scoots outright for the cost of renting it for about a week (and chances are, it'd last about that long too before breaking down). I'd almost suggest possibly picking up some brat's razor e300 off of craigslist, since you can infallibly find someone that has wasted their money on one, which I thought might be kind of cool for this purpose. But then I remembered that they only last for about 30 minutes, and then they're a useless 20 lbs of dead weight. And besides...in all likelihood, the idiot kid had no clue how to take care of a lead-acid battery, and the battery's shot, giving you about 10 minutes of real juice. scratch the Razor idea.

Yeah...I'm still thinking a bicycle might be best. Maybe you can swing the DC Smartbike program.

https://www.smartbikedc.com/program_information.asp

Or some bicycle rental shop?

45 miles in an hour on an unkitted ET2, not likely. You'll need to plan out your route on google maps or such and take 35 mph back roads really. Without knowing the roads around there, I'd say closer to 2 hours with the twists in the road, stop signs/lights and detours. I take my ET2 to my folks place 20-25 miles away on 35mph roads and it takes me an hour each way. That being said, it's always always a blast to do the ride. I definitely don't say this to discourage you. I say do it, have a blast but be aware of what it will involve. 2 or 4 hours is a long time to be on an ET2.

I'm in a memory lab, so I'll be presenting an fMRI study where we looked at sequence learning in humans. Are you presenting at your meeting?

Wow that is really interesting! We are presenting a poster, not an actual speech presentation. We are discussing "remembering" in the fetus and cardiac orienting response. Since it is a fetus we actually aren't allowed to say "learning" so "remembering" is our term of choice, haha.

Thank you for the input! I looked into that program but you have to pay an annual fee to join the bike share program and if the bike gets stolen or damaged they charge you $550 to replace this crappy looking bike. That makes me nervous! But I will definitely look into the bicycle rental!