When the “check engine” light came on just as I was getting the Beetle to work, I was a little annoyed, but figured, hey, I’ve got the scooter as backup.
Then it started raining.
Thankfully, it’s stopped raining in time for the fireworks (pics uploading), and once the traffic is gone, the streets are dry enough to scooter home. I don’t have my long-johns at work, will have to get out the scooter-skirt, lest my legs freeze.
Your own blood always seems so bright red when you first see it. It’s only later, as it dries, that it goes dull and brown. Not the best start to a day, but at least the tires were properly inflated when all was said and done, and the mess was only on my hands and the garage floor, not on my mostly-white bert-n-ernie-are-gay shirt.
When I got to the staging area, a couple of the Dykes on Bikes were there, but it wasn’t till much later before any other scooters showed up, and very much later before anyone who was actually a regular in the SQREAM group made it. The guy with the signs never made it.
The electric scooter managed the whole run, and didn’t have any problems keeping up in the short runs we would have before circling around. I still had enough charge, I didn’t even bother looking for somewhere to plug in, once we got the Seattle Center.
I was really tired from getting up way too early (took an hour weaving orange thread thru the spokes of my wheels. Looked really cool…if you were 6 inches from it, just looked like an orange blob at speed. Would have been better served with less time and more wide crepe paper. Lessons learned.
Didn’t go back down to shoot the rest of the parade, didn’t even stay at the center too long before I went to take a quick nap. Did run up to visit Brad on the hill, got to meet a couple of people who’d been in drag during the parade (one of whom was still in drag and deep into the bottle), who both ended up being featured in the very tiny segment the news did on pride. The bar was enjoying it.
A typical pride day, really.
Sound Speed Scooters didn’t call me yesterday eve like they said they would. I took that as a pretty bad sign.
I just got off the phone with the scooter-mechanic, who claims that they think they have the problem solved now, that it was a bad controller / lithium communication channel. He says they replaced the controller, and drove the scooter thru a full charge yesterday, without any issues. They are going to do another full run again today, and hopefully have my bike ready tonight.
Because they’re going out of town for the weekend, so if it’s not tonight, it’s next week (he said monday, but they aren’t usually open on mondays, so…?). Yeah, go take off for a weekend, leave me stuck, again, while we finally get some sunny weather.
schmucks.
The scooter manufacturer’s rep is supposed to be back down at Sound Speed today, since they couldn’t repro the problem for him on tuesday. I wish I could hold out a hope that I’d have a working scooter by the weekend, but I so doubt that the problem is going to be as easy to fix as they think.