Oh heck, I'll have all the status I need: The scooter is blue and white, which means I can wear the matching helmet and leather jacket left over from the Ducati Paso I had a number of years ago.
Totally truck free isn't going to happen.
First off, living in the country means that I am the garbage company - both trash and recyclables. Rural Virginia counties have wonderful garbage dumps, er, 'transfer stations' that are able to handle bloody well anything should you want it properly recycled, or just have the garbage tossed into the dumpster. That's a trip every two weeks. Grocery shopping is weekly, and while the store is only five miles away, multiple trips for the week's groceries on either bicycle or scooter is impractical, and the multiple trips on the scooter will end up using more gasoline than one trip in the truck.
And there are actual load haulings done periodically, which is why, if I'm going to have to have one motorized four wheeled vehicle, it's going to be a pickup truck not a car. I want the functionality. Happily, said pickup always gets in the low 20's on gas, verging up to the mid 20's on a highway trip with the cruise locked on. Having an automatic (wife doesn't drive a stick, has absolutely no desire to learn), I've always felt that's decent mileage.
Car-free invariably means living in the city, which I've always assumed the majority of this group already does. 35 years ago, I lived in downtown Erie, PA, and got around like that 98% of the time. It worked very well, and very easily.
Nowadays, I refuse to live in the city - or the suburbs. I'm strictly a country boy for reasons ranging from never having to lock the house when I go to work (lets see you city folks try that one on a regular basis) to enjoying listening to my neighbor's cattle as I pedal out to the road to pick up the morning paper.
First impressions of the scooter are very good - mileage is in the low 70's, it handles the morning commute without worrying about some car running up my tailpipe, and I'm riding the center of the lane not hugging the edge. I'll just be watching on longevity. Never considered one of those 50cc jobs that can be run without a license. I've driven them, and they have absolutely no advantage over a bicycle - performance is only about 5mph better, which isn't worth it for such a massive cost increase.
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Syke
“No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
H.L. Mencken, (1926)