From ADV to scooter, I don't want On The Road anymore

I recently sold my ADV that I had been riding for over a year and replaced it with a mid-sized scooter.

It's not that I no longer liked that bike. Although the VOGE 500DS didn't sell well, the performance and quality were still decent. Over the past year and more, I rode it to Zhaotong, Chongqing, and western Sichuan.

The ADV design is actually suitable for long-distance riding, with the three boxes able to carry a lot of stuff. The 500cc displacement acceleration can rarely be matched on regular city streets.

So why did I sell it?

First, I didn't have enough time to ride it. Before buying the bike, I thought I would often ride to western Sichuan on weekends, shoot the starry sky, and then come back, without missing Monday work.

But in reality, at my pace, I could only reach Yaan in a day, and then I had to rush back. It's not that I had never gone on a weekend blitz of a few hundred kilometers before, like to Yangjin. But I would depart on Friday and return on Sunday evening around 10 PM after setting out at 6 AM. It's feasible, but the energy consumption is simply too great.

Plus, western Sichuan gets snowy in the winter, and the best time to shoot the Milky Way is in the summer, which is the rainy season there with thick cloud cover all day. I planned several routes, but was thwarted by the weather each time, and eventually lost the motivation.

Second, the ADV is very unsuitable for riding in the city. For me, riding a high-displacement bike is a hassle. Before setting out, you need to warm up the engine for half a minute, wear full gear including helmet, gloves, and even riding shoes and apparel.

This is not just for showing off. Before I had riding shoes, I could clearly feel the gear lever when shifting, and the shoelaces would often come undone.

Gloves are also indispensable. Not only for wind and warmth protection, but also to prevent your hands from being pinched and injured when operating the clutch, and to protect against stones and insects at high speeds.

The pre-ride preparation work for a manual transmission bike is very time-consuming, but often I just want to go to a place a few kilometers away, and don't want to go through all that.

As a result, I could only ride the motorcycle as a task on weekends, not as a means. The overall utilization was too low.

Third, it's the riding environment in Chengdu. I live in the city center, where motorcycles are banned by regulation, depending on whether the traffic police catch you. I'm not sure if it's because of the city's financial situation, but this year I've been caught several times, although most of the time I didn't get points or fines for various reasons. But this kind of anxious feeling is really unpleasant. Every time I ride a motorcycle in the city center, even without the traffic police, I feel targeted and criticized by others.

But the scooter doesn't have these problems. It's a strange phenomenon that although my scooter has a 250cc engine, which is higher than many adventure bikes, in the riding circle, if you ride anything other than a sportbike, it means you don't pursue speed and passion. If you encounter another manual bike on the highway, they may give you a thumbs up. But if you ride a scooter, even a high-end BMW or Yamaha, you're at the bottom of the discrimination hierarchy, on par with electric mopeds.

Fortunately, I don't mix in that circle, so these things don't bother me.

In the motorcycle-banned area, the scooter is also not as conspicuous, and the noise is not as loud. By the time the traffic police realize my displacement is over 150cc, I've already slipped away.

Now I ride a Kymco CT250, whose performance is sufficient for both city streets and highways. Previously, on roads in good condition, my top speed was 80-90 km/h, but any faster and the wind noise becomes excessive, requiring high mental focus, making me very tired. 80 km/h is a comfortable speed, and this scooter can easily reach that, so the occasional motorcycle trip is not a problem.

More importantly, I now dare to ride the scooter around the city center, with a greatly reduced chance of being caught. The overall utilization has also increased.

But this scooter also has some shortcomings.

The main one is performance. After all, the displacement is halved, and I haven't adjusted to the feeling of twisting the throttle without suddenly shooting forward. Compared to the previous 500DS, the configurations are also much worse, resulting in poorer braking performance.

Another is fuel consumption. Although the displacement is only half, the fuel consumption is actually higher, currently around 4 liters per 100 kilometers, meaning I have to find a gas station after about 180 kilometers.

In other aspects, I'm quite satisfied.

However, with this scooter, my previous electric motorcycle's position has become somewhat awkward. Although it's still the most comfortable for trips under 5 kilometers, the scooter can also achieve the purpose. So I'm also considering selling the electric motorcycle and just keeping this one scooter.

I hope this scooter can last until the next stage of my life, as I don't want to change vehicles again.