After a year of consideration and on-and-off research, I finally found a way to stop driving the Nissan Armada around. The point of not driving it is to save the miles/wear-and-tear for the real reasons we bought it… to drive large groups of people around and to haul large items around. It was never meant to be a commuter car. We bought it when we lived in the Seattle area and we never drove it to work. It sat parked in our garage most of the time. We brought it out when people came to visit us, when we took road trips (what a great car for road trips), and we hoped to buy a boat and/or other toys that we would haul around behind it… but then we moved to Utah. Gone are the days of carpooling to work in the morning.

For the past 2 years I’ve been looking at ways to reduce the amount of time driving the Armada. Last summer we were living in a temporary apartment close to my work so I was able to ride my mountain bike to work, but it obviously wasn’t a permanent solution. That’s when I started looking into the idea of getting a scooter.

I did a lot of research and compared specs of many different brands and models of scooters. In the beginning I was thinking Vespa. One of my good friends and neighbors in Washington had a Vespa that he rode around from time to time, so I started out test driving a couple Vespa scooters. I really liked the style of the Vespas, but I didn’t like the performance as much as I thought I would. The 250cc version was just too big (I might as well get a motorcycle) and the others seemed a bit underpowered. I didn’t dismiss Vespa right away, though… I still liked the style. But in the end, the small wheels and expensive price tag (relative to other brands with similar specs) made me look elsewhere.

I read a lot of good things about KYMCO scooters, and one of my neighbors in the temporary apartment had a People 150. KYMCO is one of the largest scooter companies in Taiwan. I test drove one. It wasn’t quite fast enough for me, but I really liked the larger wheels. The People 250 was fast enough, but I kept thinking if I had to get a 250cc engine I should just get a motorcycle.

Eventually I ended up looking at SYM scooters, which is the other major scooter company in Taiwan. I test drove the HD 200. It wasn’t quite as fast as I had hoped, but I knew that it was fast enough for me. I wasn’t planning on taking it on the freeway, and I figured it could do about 60 mph.

I bought it.

That was almost 2 weeks ago. I have ridden it to work every day since. I even took it camping up Big Cottonwood Canyon. That was a fun ride.