Man Down

Jason in hospital.  Jason is now at his parents house and in good spirits, and by good spirits I mean Morphine.

Side Swiped in the OC.

Thursday morning i was scooting to work down Irvine Center Drive / Edinger Avenue nearing the underpass for Jamoboree in Irvine, CA. Traffic was slowing and the last thing I remember was checking my mirrors and looking over my shoulder to change lanes...

The next thing I remember is waking up in an ambulance heading to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana. In the emergency room I had a quick flash of being bumped by a silver car but that's it. I think maybe I tried to change lanes from the right to middle lanes while a car tried to change lanes from the left to center lane. Basically, from what I can remember I was side swiped and the driver of the car got away. According to the police he took off so fast none of the witnesses could get the plate number.

Lucky for me the damages to myelf and the scooter should easy to heal. I broke my left shoulder and probably fractured a couple of ribs. I have a couple spots of road rash on my left ankle and knee. Everything on the scooter inlcuding my black mac book was recovered by the police, towing company, or EMTs. I haven't seen the scooter yet, but reports say there are only a few scratches and the rear left panel was cracked.

The part that annoys me most is that I just finished painting, chopping, and reupholstering the Met. It was starting to look pretty cool. You can see the changes I had made here:
http://totalruckus.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=22820

I will post some pictures of the damage to the Met tomorrow when I can take them in the light. In the mean time I just want to warn everyone out there to be careful. No matter how much attention you might be paying to the road, other people aren't watching out for you.

On a side note, if anyone has the left rear panel for a met they are looking to let go for cheap, please let me know. Doesn't matter what color, I'm going to paint it black anyway.

Modifications: Leather Seat

I decided to try reupholstering the seat on my Met. It came out pretty good for $25 in material and having little to no experience in scooter seats. If I had the mad sewing skills I could get rid of the folds on the corners. But overall, I'm happy with how it came out.

Modifications: Choppin' & Paintin'

In the next couple of weeks I am going to do a Ruckus swing arm swap so I thought I would do some prep work by chopping off the rear end and doing some painting. Getting the body off the Met is kind of a pain without the service manual but we finally figured it out. I cut off everything under the tail light and moved the license plate and new side reflectors up and attached them to a Honda rear carrier rack I purchased. I also painted the side cowls and the front leg guards gloss black. I used Krylon made for plastic spray paint and put on about 4 coats. In a couple of weeks I will polish it down to get rid of some of the imperfections. I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out. It's a huge change for only $15 worth of parts. (Well, unless you add in the price of the rear carrier. That was another $60.)

Besides the Ruckus swing arm swap, I plan on upgrading the exhaust and rear shock. I'm also searching for an old vintage suitcase to make a rear carrying case out of. I'm also going to have a friends father pinstripe the entire scooter for me. I can't wait to get it all done and see what it looks like. It an expensive new habit I've found. But it's lots of fun.

You can see all the pictures I took here:
http://albums.phanfare.com/3089946/2656749#imageID=45396505

It got dark by the time we were finished today. I'm going to take some better pictures of the finished product tomorrow.