WHO WE ARE

We're fifteen people in Richmond who ride old Italian scooters, plus a couple of not-so-old ones that aren't Italian, and we're not sorry about any of it. Some of us are mods. Some of us are ska kids. One is a punk rock drummer who rebuilt his Lambretta on his kitchen table. A couple of us just like small engines and big coffee. All of us would rather be riding.

I'm Bobby. I'm 24, I cook the line at a restaurant in Shockoe Bottom five nights a week and work the counter at a record store on the weekends, and I ride a 1966 Vespa Sprint that I bought for $400 with a seized engine and a family of mice in the glove box. I keep this page because I'm the only one in the club who knows what a <table> tag is.

The club started in the back of that record store in the spring of 1996. Five of us were waiting on a Lambretta that wouldn't kickstart, somebody pulled out a deck of cards, and by the time it fired up we had a name. (Yes, we know the original Ace Cafe in London was where the rockers hung out. That's the joke. Lighten up.)

THE SUNDAY RIDE

Every Sunday, noon, from the coffeehouse on West Main in the Fan. Show up at 11:30, get a coffee, admire everybody's chrome, and we roll at noon sharp-ish. We usually ride two or three hours. Down Monument Avenue, over to Carytown, out to Libby Hill to look at the river, and when the weather's good, east on Route 5 along the James past the old plantations. We keep it around 40 to 45 because half our bikes won't go any faster and the other half shouldn't.

Anybody on two wheels and a small engine is welcome. You don't have to own a vintage scoot. You don't have to own a parka. You don't have to like ska, although you will by the end.

CLUB RULES

THIRD ANNUAL RIVER CITY RAMBLE: OCTOBER 22-24, 1999

Our rally is back for year three. Friday night soul and ska dance, a Saturday ride-out down Route 5, a gymkhana with a slow race and a plank ride, and trophies for Best Vespa, Best Lambretta, Furthest Traveled and Hard Luck. Last year we had 41 scoots from four states and D.C. This year we want fifty. Full schedule and how to sign up >>

TECH CORNER

Premix. All the Lambrettas and most of the old Vespas in this club run premix, meaning the two-stroke oil goes right in the gas tank with the gas. Most of us run 2 to 3 percent with a good two-stroke oil, which works out to roughly 2-1/2 to 4 ounces of oil per gallon. Mix it in a gas can and shake it, don't just pour oil in the tank and hope. Some P-series Vespas came with an oil injection pump, so check yours before you pour in oil on top of it. And if somebody just rebuilt your engine, run what the builder tells you.

The plug chop. Want to know if your bike is running too lean (bad, as in seized-piston bad) or too rich? Get on a straight empty road, run it flat out in top gear, then pull in the clutch and hit the kill switch at the same time, and coast to a stop. Pull the plug and look. Tan or coffee-colored is just right. Black and wet is too rich: you're wasting gas and fouling plugs. White or light gray is too lean, and you need to go up on your main jet before you hole a piston. Greg can help you with jets. Greg can help you with anything. Bring Greg a sandwich.

Clutch cables. They always break at the worst possible moment, usually where the wire meets the nipple at the lever. If you carry a spare inner wire and a screw-on nipple, you can usually feed the new wire through the old outer cable on the side of the road. Grease it going in. Set it with a little free play at the lever so the clutch isn't slipping. Practice once in your driveway so you're not learning at night on Route 5.

"WHAT'S A MOD?"

For your mom: in Britain in the early 1960s, the mods were young working kids who spent every penny on sharp suits, soul and ska records, and Italian scooters covered in mirrors and lights, with army parkas over the suits to keep them clean. Their rivals were the rockers in leather on motorcycles. Most Americans found out about all of it from the movie Quadrophenia in 1979. Ska came out of Jamaica and caught on with the mods, came back around with the 2 Tone bands in England in the late '70s, and now it's back again and you can't go to a show in Richmond without seeing a trombone. We're just the latest kids on old scooters. There'll be more after us.