Oh, by the way, yes, apparently they are (motos and mopeds) very easy to steal. You can have car-like alarm systems installed, chain locks, disc brake locks… If the bastards want it bad enough tehy’ll get it. All the more reason to get a beater, I guess.
Twisty, what’s the difference between a moped and a scooter? I haven’t been able to suss that out in my research yet. 
I’m not Twisty but… the difference is a that a moped’s like a bike with a motor attached like this and this , like some of the early motorcycles looked, and a scooter is a thingamajigger with a platform for your feet and a cushy seating position, almost like a little Goldwing. 
I thought a BMW C1 would be a perfect commuting vehicle - it’s got a roof! But it doesn’t look like it’s available in the US. The Honda Gyro Canopy is similar. It has 3 wheels but it leans like a 2-wheeler. It’s the standard pizza delivery vehicle in Tokyo, so you know it’s practical.
Perhaps an electric bike like the LA Free is one alternative. They usually have a range of 15 miles or so. No need for licence or registration, and you can get some excercise. (Why do people take half an hour to drive home, then spend an hour at the gym riding an excercise bike?)
Also, many cities subsidize electric vehicle purchases and I hear electric mopeds like this often qualify. Not sure about electric bicycles, but it’s worth checking.
A moped has pedals-- a scooter doesn’t.
Check with Washington State’s DMV, but you’ll probably need a motorcycle license if you want to drive anything larger than a 50 cc engine. That size engine will limit you to about 65 km/h, or roughly 30 mph.
For safety gear, it’s pretty much the same as you’ll wear on a motorcycle. At a minimum you want denim clothing, (jeans and a jacket), but leather is better. I usually wear jeans and a leather jacket.
You’ll need leather gloves-- it’s windier than you think. You’ll probably want to invest in a bandanna as well to cover that little gap between the top of your jacket and the bottom of your helmet.
As for a helmet, I’ll second Tortuga’s recommendation of a full-face helmet. If you take a spill (either on your own or from a collision) you’re likely to smack your chin into the ground first.
Nobody actually hits the pavement with the top of their head-- which is all a beanie covers.
In the US wearing a helmet is a very emotional issue, and there is a lot of rhetorical debate, misinformation, and concerns with image. In Europe even Harley riders wear full-face helmets…
It was in Playboy, I believe. Anyway…
Here’s this guy puttering down the highway on his Moped, with his girlfriend seated behind him.
Unbeknownst to him, there’s a bunch of Hell’s Angels bringing up the rear, and she turns around sticks her tongue out and shoots them a bird.
Well, it was funny at the time!
Quasi
Good link casdave If I were to get a scooter it would have to be along the lines of that Aprilia Scarabeo 50 - Very Nice, and with the LV luggage - Oh Baby!
thanks for the clarification! Now I should alter my OP – we’re thinking about getting a scooter.
on a slight tangent – given the above definitions, now I’m wondering what a motorbike is. Is it just another name for a moped?
The new Honda Metropolitans look nice, but I don’t think we’ll spring for a brand-new vehicle. I’ll definitely look into everyone’s suggestions – thanks!
I had a few in California, but:
- you need a drivers license
- you have to get a license plate for it
- you must wear head protection
- you have to park it somewhere
- somehow, someway you have to fit it between parked cars & cars zooming past you & its a tight fit.
- they use a weird fuel mixture.
- they aren’t allowed on bike trails.
- Insurance was $99 per year.
This is a moped. It’s kinda tough to see the pedals. http://www.unclegenes.com/tomostarga.htm
The idea is that you use the pedals to help you go up hills.
Motorcycles use a standard transmission (ie. they have a clutch and gear shifters), and the ‘pedals’ on a motorbike are really pegs-- a place to stick your feet.
handy makes a good point that older 2-stroke bikes may require you to mix oil and gasoline-- like you have to do with a gas-powered lawn mower. As far as I know (but I’m no expert) modern bikes just take plain old gasoline-- at least every scooter that I know about takes plain gas.
well, my opinion is that a scooter is the type of bike you would find in the movie Quadrophenia, with the chrome and the wing mirrors and the parka jackets and shagging Leslie Ash…
I digress…
this is the bike i ride
http://www.aprilia.com/ridezone/ing/models/ridefr.htm
(click on mojito 50)
for some reason they changed the name from Habana…
check the papers for a used honda spree or aero, yamaha razz if you want a good used one. good place to look is around college towns at the end of the semester. they hold value if in good shape, but you can snag one for aroun $400-$800 i figure. i heard you can get cheap chinese knock-offs at sams club brand-new for about the $600. check it out. when i was a motorcycle salesman, i sold Kaseas (from china or korea- don’t recall) and they were fair. they used old suzuki tooling and ran great, but the rest of the scoot was pretty cheaply made. still, for the money, a cheap transpo option. yes, the main source of sales were DUI convicts, cause you didn’t need a license for them in NV (they were 49cc’s)
don’t worry about mixing gas and oil. pretty much all have injector systems. you pour the oil in a seperate tank and straight gas in another (you don’t do either one very often. they get smokin’ milage!) and the scooter does the rest. vertually maintaince-free.
for a 2 mile commute in light traffic with decent weather, it would be ideal.
i have a used aero that i got for $25. i used it in vegas to run to the store on the corner, and now i zip to the mail box and around the neighborhood and have thought about bringing it to town with me to take to lunch while here at work, and just leave it here, but so far, its just as easy to take the truck or whatever “real” bike i rode that day. i’m taking it with me to the F-1 in Indy to scoot around the infield in Sept…