Shameless Plugs

It was a busy weekend, and a long weekend in Canada - Victoria Day - in honour of the queen - who isn’t really our queen anymore, but no one’s going to complain about a day off....

I spent a very busy weekend - one daughter had a water polo tournament and the other had a dance competition in Whistler. I also had to remove some large shrubs, do some marking, avoid writing report cards, and take my kids to see Spiderman Three.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of time to scoot - just short trips around town and my wife was using the camera this week. For this week’s blog, late as it is, I thought I’d take a look at some of my favourite links and why I like them. In other words, why do I have those links on the right side of the page?! I hope the bloggers don’t mind, but I’ve put a photo from each blog before the description.



Scooter in the Sticks was the first blog that I really got into - and it’s still one of my favourites. Steve Williams has been around for almost forever in blogosphere time and is a real photographer (not just a hack like me). He takes wonderful photos and is also a very good writer to boot. I read his columns and the texture and feel of his writing makes me think that he puts a lot of thought into his blog entries. As I said in my very first entry, reading Steve’s blog gave me the motivation to start my own. And the photos of him hauling a Christmas tree on the back of his LX150 are wonderful!



Blog LX is written by a Belgian guy, He really keeps up with the goings on in the Vespa world so, as a Vespa owner, I am interested in what he finds. There are updates on new models, lots of pictures of customized Vespas, and a lot of other information. He seems to update the site on a fairly regular basis although there have been a couple of weeks where I’ve pined for new information. His blog actually has a photo of my daughter Colleen and me in the left column.!



Combat Commuter has lots of information on riding including interesting stories. There are some great articles on maintenance as well as motivating articles on how he and his family strive to be ecologically green. I certainly find his article motivating as that’s a goal for my own family.



Scootin Old Skool Orin O’Neill lives just south of me and is one of the most prolific bloggers that I have read! Unlike my blog, where I have each article listed fully, Orin has just the first few lines of each entry. Good way to get you to look at a few entries and then find more information if you’re interested. One of the regular commenters on my blog, as well, I enjoy his many trips around the Pacific Northwest.



Little Billy’s Scooter Tales, written by Boll Sommers, is close to me - and really close to Orin! Hailing from Port Angeles, Washington, Bill is another blogger who is enjoyable to read and writes about as often as I do. He recently christened me “Vancouver Dave” on his blog - cool - my first scootering nickname! Enjoyable to read - and some good photos, too!



Dave at SCTRCST (Scootercast) does a very nice podcast on scootering. He’s got an easy to listen to voice, features all sorts of good podsafe music, and has some interesting stories and updates relating to scootering. He’s also done a couple of interviews with some bloggers including Steve Williams and the blogger for 2strokebuzz and they are definitely worth listening to.



From Down Under is Gotta Scoot, written by Michael Stevens, a fellow teacher! He’s done what I wished I did - started his blog when he first started riding his scooter. I waited about 6 months before I started and would have liked to record how I felt at the time. Michael includes lots of good photos and I find that I really relate to his stories as he’s rather new at this - like me.




A Japanese blog which I think is called VECHS is a great read. What I do is copy the Japanese characters and paste them into Google language tools. The translation is not perfect by any means, but you usually get the main idea. That’s only half the fun - I love the photos that the blogger (kmshio) takes - makes me think back to the year that I taught in Tokyo many years ago. It’s also really cool to see a link to my blog on a page that is in mostly Japanese writing!

There are also other links that I have listed - and they all have good blogs, too. It’s just that the ones I’ve listed are particularly interesting to me and I’ve been reading them for a fairly long time - at least what I think is a long time in this day and age of technology.

The great thing about the blogosphere is that I know I’ll discover more scooter blogs - and other blogs - that interest me. And I know I’ll continue to have new and different people discover and read my blog. It’s a brave new world!