The SuperCub, with its 49cc engine and 3 speed semi-automatic transmission and large diameter wheels, is capable on hills and rough roads very much unlike a Vespa. It has wide enough tires to deal with gravel and dirt, yet is light enough to be operated one handed. It's very practical. The local high school and college students should have them. The upgraded 90cc and later 110cc models gave it better hill climbing ability, which around here would be crucial. You can park it the same places you park a bicycle, and is only slightly larger. In Asia, these are used for deliveries, commuting, and mass transportation, even of some rather absurd levels of cargo and passengers.
The SuperCub is minimalist, and that's fine sinse in these times of enduring unemployment. You have to pinch your pennies. If you happen to be single, or just out on your own for the first time, buying a new car is a terrible mistake to make. Instead, seriously look at where you live, where you need to go, and see if you can get by on a bicycle. Not making car payments at $200-350/month means you can deal with life on Minimum Wage, Part Time, as all jobs are now.
Of course, if you have hills to climb, or a distance more than 10 miles each way, a bicycle won't work. If you can avoid highways, this opens the option of scooters and motorcycles to you. I realize that 2-stroke engines are dirty, polluting, and not the most reliable. They are cheap, however, and a 50cc is about 9 HP, which is enough to drag you up a hill, slowly, but faster than pedaling. With all the little streets, you can use them here to get around.
It would be nice if more Chinese scooters were CARB legal, but many places that sell them, claiming they are? They lie. Be VERY careful with that. Might be worth the expense to go through a dealer, just to make this their problem instead of yours.
If you want something more reliable and less work to maintain than a ragged and buzzing 2-stroke, a 125cc 4-stroke single works just fine. While the best deals new are mopeds like the MadAss, which will ship a crate to your driveway, used tends to be a lot cheaper. The best deals are street legal Dual Sport motorcycles or old Honda Rebel 234cc. The Rebel isn't meant to be kept more than a summer, just passed along, but the upside is they're very cheap and as they're a cruiser, they work on American roads. Just make sure you look after the brakes and keep spare drum brake pads on hand. On these hills, having brake fade with only two wheels could kill you. Still, if you ride SLOWLY and carefully, you can do so and be healthier than trying it on a bicycle. Both from avoiding a heart attack and from keeping up with traffic.
It is worth commenting that even with the huge size of California, you will miss too much of it if you go faster than scooter speeds. Racing through California is something everyone does, and thus miss most of it. My ex-wife had some good aspects of her personality, which lead to our marriage, such as the need for domestic exploration. We would get in a car and pick and road and see where it went. A good practice, since you end up finding many interesting things that way. Most people who ride them stick to city terrain on their scooters, but you don't have to, if you pick your roads carefully. A bigger engine and actual gears opens way more roads to you, just remember to ride slow enough to see what's around you. You don't have to race the traffic. Two wheels isn't about dominance. You already lost that to the first sports car that passed you.
And in local commuting, they are a joy. Park in an alleyway or on a sidewalk chained to a tree or railing, provided your local police aren't ridiculous. Many see handing out tickets as a way to pay for lunch, as revenue. This is crooked, and the difference between them and basic highway robbery is robbers don't have a union.
I would like for scooters to be cheaper, much cheaper, so people will buy them, so many that they aren't worth stealing because they are everywhere, like cheap bicycles. All scooters should be around $500, which is still 3x what they cost to make, including labor and shipping. There are cutting edge people in this town, riding scooters around, but not enough. Enough to be noticed, and not run over, and the drought and unemployment rate are actually great for motorcycling and scootering. And there's also those homebuilt sidecars, which I respect. But these need to be cheap. They need to be everywhere. The more on the road, the more cars will make sure to see them. You reach a critical mass of attention so they aren't run down. It stops being "Oh, well she didn't see him so its okay she killed the kid on the scooter" to the Jury in the Murder Trial and starts being "That's murder, Jail for life" kind of response and level of care. Narrow roads make these sensible commuting options once drivers remember that riders on half as many wheels are still just as human as they are.
Despite America becoming a future major oil producer, passing Saudi Arabia next year (which is not as awesome as it sounds because Saudi has been lying about its reserves since 1981), we will be exporting most of it for cold hard cash. That leaves little for us, and I suppose banning full time jobs via unaffordable health care, and overwhelming poverty for everyone is a way to cut down on oil consumption, we still like to get around. And pedaling only works on the flatlands. So scooters are the future. A pity that electric ones suck, but gasoline powered engines can be swapped for ones tuned to new fuels, or adjusted as needed. At $35 an engine, that is less than a tank of gasoline. Think about that. Entire vistas of upgrade possibilities exist because of that economy of scale. So the next time you think about upgrading your car to a Tesla, ponder the costs of just keeping the junker running and hop on a scooter for those many sunny days.
That's the upside of drought in California. Lovely weather for riding. Bad for boating and farming. Make the best of it. Endure. You aren't in charge, after all. What else can you do?
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