Modern Vespa

Exactly....In other words you still get to have fun!!! Duh! What fun would it be if it were like a trike (a bike with training wheels) and the rider was not required to have *some* talent. I think this is a common misconception with the MP3...that you don't actually have to know how to ride a motorcycle to ride one. I am often confronted by burley biker types at gas stations or scenic overlooks and they are like "Oh cool. I could get that for my wife so she would be safe." I am then forced into lecturing them about how it is not "safe" or "safer" and requires just as much talent as riding on two wheels....

Thanks ERICALM for the heads up.


I have purchased CR from news stands over the years for research for products I was considering purchasing. I would hate to think that the "testing" of such products is similar to the write up of the MP3. Being the owner of a 500 and 9000 miles under my belt, it is clear that Gabe wasn't familiar with the scooter at all based on his comments.
Let's examine them:
1)"You still have to get comfortable leaning the THING into the corners"
My response;"Well yeah! Otherwise you'd fall over". How is this a negative?

2)"The front suspension lock mode disengages rather quickly".
My response;"Well yeah! Otherwise, if you went over a bump while moving with it locked, you would get thrown off the scooter". How is this a negative?

3)"So what's the real advantage?"
My response;"Well if you don't know, you're getting paid to find out. Maybe if you posed your opinions in the article and posted Piaggio's response to each unknown you could educate everone(This is why people buy the magazine. For the education, not the illusion of such). Gee, I wonder why they did it this way? THEN GO AND FIND OUT.

It is time for a name change, ConsumerReportsUneducatedOpinions.

I'm surprised you didn't complain about the temperature in degrees celsius instead of fahrenheit not knowing you can change between the two.






Posted by: MJM50CAL |

The other posts were excellent!

[quote="larrylarry75"] Good God larrylarry75 !! I finally figured out who you look like. Been driving me NUTS !!

Proximo - from Gladiator

aka Oliver Reed

Boy, you guys sure as shit take everything quite personally and way too seriously over here in the MP3 forums. I've no intent of starting a pissing contest, especially when there already appeared to be one underway.

I was actually poking fun at both of you for dropping Latin and your exchange, but apparently the sarcasm and good-natured ribbing was far too subtle.

I had a full 3 years of Latin, by the way, in grades 7-9. But hey, feel free to impugn my education via ad hominem ad infinitum if it so pleases you.

If you're at all tired or uninterested in a discussion others are having, you can easily opt to not engage in it at all and move along to something that interests you more. There's a convenient little text link on the lower left: "Stop watching this topic."

sarcasm never comes across very well on forums unless you ad emoticons and other hints. In general people read things different then what the writer intended.

I wish I could, but how do you stop 'watching it' if you have never enabled 'watching' in the first place? That's why we need a couple of extras:

Declare a topic 'uninteresting' (all will be marked as read automagically).

Kill file for posters we never want to read again (though we may get quoted replies).

These are a couple of sensible things that have been available on Usenet since the dawn of the 'net way, way back.

Oh yeah - plonk files would be welcome.

That's often usually almost always the case, but somehow I figured "Welcome to the Smartass Olympics" was a pretty clear indication. Silly me.

Curmudgeonly spoken... awaiting expected (non)-compliance to occur any moment now. Chill, Winston. It's only a forum... with emoticons!

OK enough of this already. You guys want to know what always makes me happy? Not bikes, not scooters. Dogs! Time to move along, this forum deserves our best and Consumer Reports doesn't cut it.
LL75

Aha! There we have it. A cultural foo-pah on my part. In LA calling someone a smartass needs no emoticon as it's widely understood as a friendly slap on the back. Crips & Bloods probably use it to greet one another in the spirit of brotherhood. Sorry to have misunderstood old man - in this part of the country it's pretty much guaranteed to get you a poke in the snoot. My bad.

Now ain't that the truth - we were just having a conversation the other day about my buddy in Indiana that has a Jack Russel that rides on the tank of his Beamer. He has a non-slip pad. Hyper as those dogs are he rides perfectly. Man I wish I had one like that...

I'm with you on this Larry!

Wotta great pooch! Send him/her our way if you ever need to.
Best,
LL75

Maybe it's generational. I'm from Ft. Worth.

Hi Eric,

Not criticizing you - but sometimes sarcasm is meant purely in jest and sometimes it is anger veiled with humor. That is what is hard to tell with just the written word. I took "Smartass Olympics" as the former, but I can see how it could be taken as the latter.

The same difficulty occurs with irony.

Hmmmm nowadays we debate what Ft Worth *is* exactly - even in "live and let" Austin they wonder. Anyway - that last blurb from me was meant as an illustration of true & unmistakable sarcasm. Now *that's* the way ya do it! As Michael pointed out, it's tough telling sarcasm and irony online - my contribution to that is that it needs to be obvious. One of the other things that's very difficult to tell on line is when someone is pulling your chain - i.e. fucking with you. Some folks don't take that so well even though it's not usually intended to be a "bad" thing. Usually it's a tit-for-tat sort of thing.... What we really need is a "bury the hatchet" aka "kum-ba-yah" motie.

So getting back to the article on CR. Last blog post I see was on the 11th. Some pretty good ones. If you havn't already chime in if it moves you. I would hate to see someone read that mostly crap article and make a decision without having many other viewpoints from people that actually ride mp3's.

I think they just cried "uncle!"

Bwahahahaha! FTW. Way to go, MP3ers. I'm from there but haven't been back in 10 years. I have no idea what this means. (No, seriously.) It's a very nice city. It's home to two of the greatest art museums in the US not located in a coastal city. It's a much nicer place to live than Dallas or the Mid-Cities. You can still but a very nice house there for under $200K. The urban sprawl hadn't wasn't quite as bad as South Austin and most of the other big TX cities. I hear they have a Central Market now. I'd hate to think that they ruined the place over the past decade. So, basically, why don;t we all sit down and smoke a bowl? Just what I'd expect from some long-haired Austinite hippie!

Yeah man! My daughter lived there for a couple of years and absolutely hated it - apparently the Katrina refugees brought a lot of trouble with them and fringe areas grew. I agree the culture appears to be pretty dang good - I need to go visit there for a bit and see for myself. LOL - Austin does have that rep for sure - and I can't argue that it doesn't deserve it - I just relocated here and still sorting things out. But - rest assured that I seldom get my knickers in a twist over anything anyone says online - I've been around since waaaaaaaaay back (hint I was involved in setting up one of the first Usenet feeds from a military installation when the military started relaxing access) - point being I learned the limits of online communiques long ago.

I just posted the following response on CU's dumb blog:

"Clearly, we touched a nerve here with the enthusiast community. To clarify, this is not a test. It is not labeled as such. It is a driving impression/opinion, based on input from several staff riders."

If what you say in the above posting is accurate then I would ask what the purpose of your "report" is? It's abundantly clear you have neither the riding experience nor the engineering expertise to make any kind of assessment that has merit.

I ride both two-wheeler sport bikes and a Piaggio MP3-500 which I believe makes me far more qualified to write evaluations than you or any of your staff members. Do you or any of them ride 20,000 miles per year? No? Didn't think so.

The concept of an independent "drivng impression/opinion" could have value but only if performed by a competent evaluator who possessed experience and skills in the subject matter. Your lack of understanding and inability to accurately evaluate this product demonstrates you are not that person.

It's obvious to me that CU continues to publish misinformation as they have always done which is why I stopped reading your reports years ago.


Posted by: Larrylarry Seventyfive December 14, 2009 at 01:09 PM

+1 Don't tread on us!

Oh and nice rebuttle Larry. Hope they post it.

ya like them apples...