Toronto, trash and scooters

Being in Toronto the past two weeks has been interesting. It has been a long time since I've spent much time in a big city. Other than Port au Prince, of course. Well, the trash situation in Toronto resembles Port au Prince more than San Francisco.

A big problem is that Ontario does not have a deposit on container law. Soda cans, zillions of 250ml water bottles, anything like that which is picked up by recyclers in California, are thrown on the ground. There is no financial incentive for anyone to pick them up. I've been told that Alberta has a deposit and redemption system, but Ontario does not. Hey, that is pretty backwards.

I see a few scooters here, not like San Fran or Santa Cruz. The riding season is cut short by snow, of course, but this is a large city with hardly any freeways; all surface streets. We need more scoots here. I did see a new Vespa GTV with the headlight on the fender. Beautiful. Expensive.

I've been searching the new scooter scene this past week. I had a Vespa GS 160 (maybe it was a 150) in the late 70's, then another in the late 80's, but they were both worn out and unreliable. I've been looking because lately a surge in new automatic plastic bodied can be seen in Calif. Most of them are from China, with unrecognized names.

Now, India has been making Vespa's under license for generations, and Bajaj is a popular bike in Calif, with a 150cc four stroke motor and the traditional manual transmisison with twist shift on the left handlebar. Another Indian Vespa has been sold in the USA as the Stella by Genuine Scooters. Well, the Indian manufacturer of that bike, LML of India, stopped producing any vehicles at all while searching for a partner. Bajaj makes only automatic scooters now; the market for traditional scoots disappeared in India.

But. Kinetic has been making some interesting automatic scooters. They bought the rights to the Italjet line of machines and have started producing one of them for the Indian market. Phase 2 motors is trying to bring these Indian scoots which are modern, tough, and built far better than most of the Chinese no name scoots one sees.