RIVER CITY RALLY

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
JULY 1, 2008

The first St. Louis Scooter Club sponsored scooter rally, RIVER CITY RALLY will be held in St. Louis on September 12th - 14th, 2008. The three-day event will include a balance of both urban and beautiful countryside rides and events.

The RIVER CITY RALLY is the first official St. Louis scooter rally in over 10 years after the legendary Hard Luck Scooter Club's last sponsored rally in the mid 90's.

You can visit the RIVERCITYRALLY.COM website for details.

Please visit this link to book your room at the official HOLIDAY INN - THE VIKING.

If you are interested in our RIVER CITY RALLY email us with your information and we will place your email on our fast growing mailing list. We do not share our emails with any person, sponsor, or service.

Personal and corporate sponsorship can call Ed at 314-226-1675.

SPREADING THE LOVE

The SLSC club monthly schedule is as follows:

7-02-08 Meet-up at Schlafly's Bottleworks at 6:15 pm.

7-04-08 Show support for Vespa Kirkwood at the Kirkwood Parade 9am.

7-06-08 Devils Elbow ride - for information see www.stlscooterclub.com/forums

7-09-08 Meet-up at Schlafly's Bottleworks at 6:15 pm.

7-16-08 Ride to work week - meet-up TBA.

7-23-08 Meet-up at Schlafly's Bottleworks at 6:15 pm.

7-30-08 Meet-up at Schlafly's Bottleworks at 6:15 pm.

FREE ST. LOUIS SCOOTER RESOURCE

The St. Louis Scooter Club and Forum wants to make sure you check out the very active Greater St. Louis Scooter Forum. This forum is for everyone who rides anything scooter in the metro St. Louis region. They are not club affiliated and are an independent scooter resource. The forum is organized and managed by very active local scooter owners who know their scooters inside and out.

The St. Louis Scooter Club and Forum also invites you to check out the following other wonderful regional websites:

Mad Totos - Kansas City, Missouri scooter club mostly smaller scooters
KC Scooter - Kansas City, Missouri yahoo scooter group
CoMoSC - Columbia, Missouri scooter club
Between Two Rivers - Iowa Regional scooter club
Knights of St. Louis - St. Louis, Missouri closed scooter club for vintage riders only
Old Bastards SC - St. Louis, Missouri closed scooter club
30 Day Scooter Gang - St. Louis, Missouri scooter gang for small engines only

Check out these clubs and forums today! Tell them SLSC sent ya.

THE AUTOPED 1915-1921

By Scooter Historian JFRED

There were many attempts to build motorscooters in the early days of motoring. Some were pretty successful and some pretty bizarre.

The early motorscooters were clumsy and cumbersome and not very reliable. Owners were often found pushing their scooter back home for tinkering or repairs. While the automobile and motorcycle evolved into reliable and affordable means of transportation the motorscooter remained the play toy of the wealthy and did not become an economical means of personal transportation.

Arthur Hugo Cecil Gibson’s Autoped was among the more successful. It started out as the Marks Motorscooter . Copies were produced under license in Germany by Krupp and in Czechosovakia by CAS. In Great Britian a version was produced by Douglas.

In America it was marketed as the Ever Ready Autoped. The scooter was powered by a 155cc single cylinder engine and weighed in at 96lbs. The construction was unusual in that it was fabricated using stamped sheet metal and steel plates rather than the tubing construction of bicycles and motorcycles.

To operate the scooter, the rider pushed forward on the handlebar to engage the clutch, pull back midway and you are free wheeling. Pull all the way back to engage the front brake. There was no rear brake. Autoped manufactured their own red pneumatic tires. With a price of $100 it was not inexpensive.

The ad artists kind of drew their version of the scooter, the ladies must have been riding into a strong wind, top speed was only 10 mph. The American Ever Ready Autoped was certainly unique with some fairly sophisticated design features.

The Motoped was a less expensive and less successful copy of the Autoped.

The lady in this last photo looks a little nervous and he hasn’t even told her the brake is shoe leather, you drag your foot to stop.

In the next installment we will look at some more first generation motorscooters.


Jfred is mostly into vintage scooters. He enjoys restoring them but no show queens, His 1947 Cushman is an original unrestored scooter and is just like his very first he had at the age of 12. It's slow, not powerful and doesn't handle well but it makes Jfred smile every time he rides it. He moved to Steelville, Missouri when he retired 11 years ago.

EARLY SCOOTER DAYS IN AMERICA

By Scooter Historian JFRED

In the early days of applying the new internal combustion engine to meeting the needs of transportation it was not always a linear path. While the motorized buggy evolved into the automobile, the motorized bicycle evolved into the motorcycle and someone put a motor on a child’s push scooter giving birth to our motorscooter, there was a lot of blending of technology.

The difference between the automobile and motorcycle blurred with the cycle car. It had side by side seating and steering like an automobile and was powered by a motorcycle engine with chain drive. The difference between the motorscooter and motorbike gets blurry as scooters got bigger wheels and motorbikes got smaller wheels. Once someone put a seat on the motorized push scooter we had the step thru feature. Generally, if it is step thru it is a scooter. There are exceptions of coarse.

In America the guy we probably owe thanks to is Arthur Hugo Cecil Gibson. He was awarded the patent for the Autoped in 1916.

The Autoped company of Long Island, New York described their scooter as the “Wonder of the Motor Vehicle World”. The military even considered the Autoped for service in World War I. This little dandy was produced until 1921.

The motorscooter in America was mostly a novelty until the depression of the 1930s. The combination of the changes in society requiring available transportation as part of daily life and the poor economy made the low cost motorscooter viable. The Salsbury Motor Glide and Cushman Auto-Glide were two of the more successful scooters during the depression.

Next installment we will talk about some of the motorscooters produced between the Autoped and Salsbury.

Jfred is mostly into vintage scooters. He enjoys restoring them but no show queens, His 1947 Cushman is an original unrestored scooter and is just like his very first he had at the age of 12. It's slow, not powerful and doesn't handle well but it makes Jfred smile every time he rides it. He moved to Steelville, Missouri when he retired 11 years ago.

CAFFEINATED, COLD, CRAZY!

Scooter Artwork in the Bathroom at Kaldi's

A recent December Night Scooter Club ride had us all meet-up at the wonderful Coffee house KALDI'S located off Demun Avenue near Forest Park. Besides are normal Wednesday start point at Schlafly's we took off in the balmy 65 degree night-time air, oh you got to love St. Louis!

We headed off to FOREST PARK where we found ourselves running around like a crazy scooter gang, but finally landed back on track to our final destination. Plenty of caffeine was the theme and boy did we consume our fill.

I big St. Louis Scooter Club shout out to the guys at VESPA ST. LOUIS who provided us with the door prize that evening - really excellent ultra clear protective helmet shields. Thank you Vespa St. Louis!

AND THE WINNER IS...

Cindy won the Vespa-St. Louis T-Shirt as the door prize during our Wednesday 11/7/07 weekly meet-up at Schlafly Bottleworks.

You can win too, but you have to come out to our weekly meetings to win! See ya there!

SLSC MEETS SOUTH COUNTY

SLSC took South County by storm on Wednesday's October 3rd weekly-meet up. The weather was a beautiful 60 degree evening and the roads were perfect for about a dozen scooters. The club met up at our normal clubhouse Schlafly's Bottleworks around 6:15pm and left promptly around 7pm. The caravan road to the Central West End to pick-up Ed at 7:15pm. After a brief pit stop near Left Bank Books, the club roared out the city and fled to the county. Sites along the way included the Delmar Loop, Washington University campus, downtown Webster Groves, Crestwood Mall area and finally ended up at Helen Fitzgerald's in Sunset Hills off Watson Road near Lindbergh.

The rest of the night was spent making fun of a scooterless scooter gang; the cover band playing amazing tunes; and Sandy's age. All in all we all had a great time and cannot wait until the next amazing run to the St. Louis County.

FIRST MEETING A SUCCESS!

Pete, Matthew, Ed, Scott, Christy, Colleen, MJ, Myke, Brittany, Maggie, Wade and not pictured is Sheila.

Update: 9/24/07

Since our first meeting about a month ago we have seen tremendous growth at our weekly meet-ups. Our last meeting had some 20 plus members show up with their scooters all spiffy and clean. We are so glad that the SLSC has really been getting great turn-outs - thanks to you! See ya Wednesday night at Schlafly's Bottleworks.