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Welcome... July 2011

Restyled reviews

The dilemma now is which ones to attend, a scary thought in a way, as sooner or later there will be so many events going on there will be one for each and every one of us! Okay, so it may not get that bad, but some weekends it feels like it.

Speaking of the rallies, you may have noticed we changed the format of some of our rally reviews in last month’s Scootering. After looking through some back issues recently, I realised that they hadn’t changed much over the years, so we decided to do something about it. As you may have read then, and will do with Kelso this month, as well as the dozens and dozens of photos we take and our overall review of the rally, every now and again we’ll be cornering one of you to ask about your weekend. So, if you find someone approaching you with a camera in one hand, pint in the other and a Dictaphone in his pocket; well it could simply be one of our contributors asking for your comments!

The end of Underdog – The £1000 Custom Scooter Challenge begins!

This month sees the final part of Sticky’s Project Underdog series, which we know from your comments has been enjoyed by many. Taking a humble Vespa SS90 (if there is such a thing!), he’s built it, registered it, rallied it, raced it, seized it, and used it as a general guinea pig for articles over the last year or so, and finally the time has come to withdraw this little scooter from the public eye.

However, looking around the rally campsites and indeed at scooters featured on these pages, you can’t help but notice more scooter owners ‘doing it for themselves’ than some may expect. Is this the way things are going, DIY scooters? Let’s hope so because that will help keep both the scene and related shops alive, and with thousands of different minds creating scooters, it can only lead to a diversity that will keep scootering interesting and vibrant for many years to come.

Of course we want to do our bit to help too, and so we’ve set ourselves a challenge for not one but three new scooters to be built by Scootering staff and featured on these pages. In true fashion however, we’re not going down the simple route. No, no, no... Richie, Sticky and myself have set ourselves a challenge to buy, build (if necessary) and customise a scooter all for £1000. Not only that but our deadline is to ride them to the Isle of Wight over the August Bank Holiday where we’ll enter them in the custom show and ask you, the readers, to judge our creations.

As I sit here writing this on June 7, I realise I’ve little over 10 weeks to complete this project, with two magazines to write in between, a couple of European rallies and numerous UK runs to attend, as well as countless other things, and I haven’t even started. What have we done to ourselves...

Andy