the armadillo scooter blog

Last June I was in Boston at the tail-end of a 3 month trip around the United States of America (and a bit of Canada) and I met up with some chaps from the Boston Stranglers S.C.. I’d meant to hook up with a few different stateside scooter clubs while on this tour but didn’t end up doing for various reasons. As soon as I saw this lot’s website though I knew I wanted to get involved, the people and scooters looked very cool.

Jon ‘Roadkill’ Rhodes was the bloke I was communicating with and he offered to give me a tour of the city on my favourite mode of transport. Having not been on a scooter for about 12 weeks by this time, I of course jumped at the chance. Jon has a decent collection of 5 or 6 scoots in different stages of restoration, I got to go out on a very nippy little 1992 Vespa PK50 with a Pollini 133 kit while Jon himself was on a gorgeous standard 1968 Vespa Primavera.

The weather was mimicking Manchester rather too well in that it was leathering it down but this is not something a hardcore scooterist snivels at, we had a great blast round Boston anyway. We headed off from the Jamaica Plain neighbourhood over to Eric’s (another club member) scooter repair shop, Metropolis Scooters. That was a cool place that I enjoyed mooching about and after a quick chat with Eric and check-over of the scoots we were on our way again. We went through a fair few towns before heading up the Chickatawbut Road (I love that name) through the Blue Hills directly south of Boston, from here we should have been able to go up to the overlook which would offer good views of the city but it was closed for some reason. So instead we went out onto the peninsula connecting Nut Island (I love that name too) for some happy snaps. In the city we went past JFK Library, Boston Garden (where The Bruins and The Celtics play), Castle Island, North End (basically Little Italy, that was the best bit for me), Mass Ave bridge and MIT to name a few. Then it was time for a couple of pints at the pub for the weekly meet-up of The Stranglers, a good set of lads they were too. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day and night. Cheers Jon.

That was the first-time I’d ridden a smallframe and it handled really well, I do not intend it to be the last.

I met up with Eric again the following night and he took me to a punk night near Harvard, after that he showed me a couple of garages where he stores his scooters. I couldn’t count them all, it was a veritable treasure trove. There was all sorts of rare and vintage stuff that he’d imported from Europe, including some Maciolettas which I’d never had the chance to see in the flesh/metal before. Here’s what I’d envisage they might look like once fully restored.

Be sure to get in touch with these guys if you’re visiting Boston and have a leaning towards all things 2-stroke, they’re very kind and hospitable so I’m sure they’d welcome any other scooterists from around the world in the same way they did me.

One other thing I wanted to say; American scooterists (and the the Boston Stranglers particularly) deserve a fair bit of kudos really, the amount of miles they rack-up on their journeys to domestic far-flung rallys is ridiculously impressive. The Stranglers are often visitors to rallys on these shores too, long may it continue.

Dan Bowen
Scooterist
http://sendthebuggerback.com

See, I like Lammys too

A couple of smallframes

Me taking in the views of the city, well I would have been if it wasn't all foggy