Shipping Scooters to
Las Vegas from Boston 2005

Wednesday, Feb. 9th was the day that the Boston Stranglers Scooter Club (and one lone Diner City Scooter Club member) was to pack up, crate up and ship out their scooters to Las Vegas for the High Rollers Weekend - Las Vegas scooter rally. But to understand my part of this story, you have to go back several weeks to when I first got it in my head that I wanted to make the effort to join in with the Stranglers and ship my Aprilia Mojito Custom 150 along with them. I contacted EP from the Stranglers and we started sporadic communications, most of which involved me freaking out over me not really knowing what "the plan" was and me feeling like I had no clue as to what was going on. But EP was not only involved in shipping HIS scooter to Vegas, but he is also the organizer of the Las Vegas Rally in general and had many more things on his plate / mind than having to deal with a freaking out graphic designer. I booked my flight to Las Vegas, same flight the Stranglers are taking on America West out of Logan in Boston. I booked a room at the Lady Luck based on EP's reccomendation. I'm now sharing a room with a friend of EP's named Tim who has left a quick message on my phone, but we haven't even met. I guess we'll meet on the way. And the weekend before shipping, I bought a new battery for my Mojito, installed it Monday night and it started right up. Tuesday night after work, I picked up a UHaul truck, parked it at Dharia's house about a block away. I drove the PT Cruiser back to Tatnuck Square to my house and I hopped on the Mojito and rode back to Dharia's so we could load it into the truck & secure it for transport the next morning. Day of shipping: I woke at 4 AM, left the house at 5 AM, and drove the UHaul truck to the designated supermarket parking lot in Allston. Steve from Plymouth was already there with the mungo truck that all of the 9 scooters would be carried in to the depot. It was warmer than usual, still some patches of ice here & there and the whole thing felt really weird. Slowly more folks show up. For some reason my Mojito has decided NOT to start despite the new battery. I suspect that the engine's flooded from all the sloshing around in transport. I disconnected the batter, stuffed it in the storage and am bringing a trickle charger JUST IN CASE. (Fingers crossed.) Jason from Boston Scoot is there with his newly redecorated Vespa with purple-silver flame detailing and some discrete effect lighting. There are 9 scooters in all. Jon Rhodes built - measured out and designed great crates to pack the scooters in. They fit in one facing one way, the other facing the reverse, solidly sitting inside of the crate base. Chipboard walls are put up around and on top. Kickstarts and fatter farings have to be removed to fit. My Mojito, being longer & fatter than the vintage bikes, has been measured up to fit in its own unique shipping crate composed of a solid wood base and fitted corrugated cardboard walls & top. ***Added details from SiD: "We were done loading the crates by 8:30. Also the crates were designed by Rhodes and built by Steve, Rhodes and I last weekend in about 7.5 hours." The whole packing the scooters into crates and loading them onto the truck took until about 8:30 or so. Alot faster than I ever thought it would take. The whole crew worked like a team, got stuff done and had fun doing it. Steve, EP & I drove the mungo truck to Forward Air in Chelsea and muscled the heavy scooter crates out of the truck to the waiting forklift guy who took them to god knows where and they should arrive in Las Vegas by Wednesday, Feb. 16th, the night we arrive by plane. There will definitely be TONS of photos taken on the Vegas trip - rally... I can't wait... - Doug

Links