My old Buddy Italia 125 suffered something of a melt-down in the mountains of New Hampshire last year. 29k kilometers of hard riding over four years finally put my poor Kermit down. Full engine seize and wasn't able to arrange a truck to bring it back over the border to Montreal. To be honest, I'd reached the limits of its capabilities with my tendency to go on long rides.
I was thinking of getting back into manual-transmission motorcycles. The Suzuki TU250 would have been ideal. Unfortunately, the price of refresher lessons and Suzuki's overpricing of said bike in my market nixed the idea. So after a little searching I found the newest offering from Kymco Canada: the 200cc version of the People GT. I did a little back-of-the-envelope figuring and felt I could swing it on my credit line.
Picked it up this morning on the first day of a long, hot Victoria weekend. After 20 km of inner city riding, I've decided that this is the scooter I've been needing for a while. Sixteen inch wheels and beefy suspension soaked up bumps that had me skittering around like a junebug to avoid on Kermit. There's power there, as well. I haven't tapped it--I tend to be easy on the throttle, and was getting used to the delivery--but it has more oomph. And the big trunk on the back finally gives me a place to stick a full face helmet.
The one niggle is the weight and the current state of the engine. The weight's considerably more than I've dealt with in a two-wheeler for a while. I'm a packer at a warehouse. Moving heavy pallets around is a part of the job. But still, the GT200i is a handful to maneuver with the engine off. The engine itself is...well, a bit of a paint mixer at idle. Nothing I haven't dealt with before on other one lunged scoots. Still a bit startling, though. It smooths out past 10 or so km/h, thankfully.
Going on my first long ride through Lachine and the West Island tomorrow. That should put some well-needed mileage in during the break-in period with varying speeds.
