Loki and Scooter

I like my dog's name, Loki. His brother was bought by my mother-in-law, and she named him Wedo (the dog is all white, and Wedo is white in Spanish).

Both unique names! But when my mother-in-law couldn't take the dog any longer, she offed him to my sister-in-law, who changed his name to Scooter. Not a very original name if you ask me.

Now, to shift gears, I went to look at Vespa scooters yesterday afternoon. The king of scooters if you ask me, but also with a king sized price. So here I am, pondering three brands:

Lance, Chinese, 150cc, $2100.
Yamaha Vino, Japanese, 125cc, $2950
Piaggio Vespa, Italian, 150cc, $4300.

Notice, of course, that not one is manufactured in the good 'ol USofA. Hmmmm. I wonder why. Not enough profit margin per bike? Too fuel efficient for American manufacturing, and not enough lobbying on their behalf in Congress? Perhaps we don't have skilled manufacturing labor anymore? Insufficient domestic demand, coupled with foreign demand that can't pay the American premium to support American labor wages?

So, my domestic dollars will be spent to support foreign labor, which, to be honest, is perfectly fine with me. I'm willing to support domestic labor but clearly I don't have a choice in this matter. I can't buy American, I don't see it as a moral issue, so fuck American automobile laborers...I won't buy their fuel inefficient products in any event.



I am vying the Vespa. I know it's a lot more expensive, but there are sixty years behind this product, I can find parts, I can find a lot of info on maintaining them on the web (as I'm prone to doing my own work on them) and they simply have the fit and finish of a bike that looks like it will survive a few decades of use.