Aug 1, 2022
Moped Maintenance
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Moped Maintenance
Came home with a moped tonight 😂 I’m only going to get like a month of riding before it gets cold but whatever. Now I have to name her!
25/8.2022 - 50-year-old women on 50-year-old mopeds, what could possibly go wrong?
Puch Maxi S
Back in college, I was roommates with a guy called David. David was what your parents would call “a hippie,” and it doesn’t really matter who your parents are or how old they are, because even future generations will agree that he was a fucking hippie. We used to hang out together between classes, ingest various aromatic compounds and discuss the philosophies of our lives.
Not only was David a hippie, but he was also a pacifist. Those two don’t always go along, you know. He really didn’t particularly care for private property, telling me during long drug-fuelled bull sessions that he figured that it was best that humanity’s assets be distributed to get positive outcomes for the entire species, not just for a few. I wasn’t unsympathetic, but usually by that point in the evening I just wanted to get to sleep so I could get up early the next morning to skip my physics lectures and go play more Ms. Pac-Man in the academic lounge’s arcade. Even foosball would be okay, because I was an educated, illuminated individual who understood that all wastes of time had their own value.
David and I lost touch after college, but we recently ran into each other. No, it wasn’t at a kombucha brewery, or a sit-in against some chain-rapist politician, or even throwing paint on a private petting zoo owner who liked to get too friendly with the goats. It was at city hall, and that’s what the problem was.
In the intervening years, I had been busy in my commitment to social justice for the downtrodden. I had formed a non-profit advocacy group, Small Bores Big Hearts, dedicated to ensuring equal access to low-horsepower moped owners in this day and age of increasing rights for the bicyclist lobby. Today was an open house discussion where citizens could lobby the city council about the new bike lanes, and of course I was there to fight for the horsepower restriction of said lanes to be raised ever-higher. My mopeds had pedals, they were practically bicycles, but a 15 horsepower limit was just stingy. If I wanted to use a renewable fuel, such as organic, all-natural nitrous oxide, I should be allowed to without fear of Big Government trying to dyno my Puch.
David, on the other hand, now owned an Audi. That Audi, he told city council, was too wide to tolerate the existence of bike lanes cutting into his through-lane of traffic. That did sound pretty wide to me, so I was initially on David’s side. During a break in the session, I decided to go over to him and talk, bad German vehicle owner to bad German vehicle owner. Perhaps we could pool our resources to win some concessions from the Mayor, whose approval ratings were so low that, if they were marked on a speedometer, he would be getting tailgated by the selfsame Audis that David represented. In imperial.
Our lobbying was a great success. Even though David, an investment banker, still believed in the redistribution of wealth (to himself), he still took the time to hear out the concerns of the community. Also, he was pretty excited that I had a working R75/5 strewn across the floor of my garage, and also helped me redistribute that into his trunk.