from the Globe and Mail, Monday, June 7, 1999

Scooters rock
by Guy Dixon

After shelling out thousands for a road-hog motorbike, or even dreaming about buying one, somewhere down the road comes the inevitable guilt trip.

It's the moment of reckoning, the payback for wanting to spend the weekend cruising on the Harley, for not being with the kids, for the noise pollution, for the sheer ego spectacle of you on your motorcycle, for talking too much about the bike and not enough about your spouse's interest.

Penance comes in the form of the Austrian-made BlauWerk Sidewalker Scooter (the standard City model is $439 and the Cruiser costs $389), complete with a chiming bell, the saintly counterpart to your Harley Davidson demons.

You aren't going to get anywhere fast with the kick scooter, and you're going to spend alot of energy in the process. Instead of taming the road, you'll find yourself praying for a downhill run, which is particularly suited to the Sidewalker's off-road Downhill model ($999).

And while your kicking your way down the bike path, maybe with cherubic children on their kid-sized Bandit and Zorro models, you can think to yourself that maybe you're at least one step (one kick) closer to heaven than if you were back on the Harley.

Stroller Coaster
by Karen von Hahn

email: kickstartscooters@yahoo.com