I really sucked at updates this year, mainly due to work getting in the way, but it’s now Wednesday, and I’m suffering from some pretty brutal H2Oi withdrawals. But with that being said, we’re all still alive, meaning our journey was a success, mostly.

Things got pretty interesting in the 24 hours leading up to the trip. Different weather apps were giving some drastically different forecasts, causing some debate amongst the 5 of us. Our preparation wasn’t nearly as rigorous as last year, and even two of the scooters were completely ripped apart in my garage less than a day before we left.

We did manage to get everyone on board, all the scooters buttoned up, and out of the house shortly after 3:00am. We briefly stopped at the 24-hour gas station in town, and departed there a minute shy of 3:30am on Wednesday morning.

This was a bit of dejavu compared to last year. The first 3-4 hours of the ride through CT and the first part of NY was very wet. Now, we had a perfect window on the radar from 2am-7am where CT was supposed to remain clear. This seemed great to us, however we sort of forgot that the entire state had received two full inches of rain mere hours before we left. This meant we dealt with a lot of very wet roads, dense fog, and high humidity. We were soaked, even though we never actually got rained on. The helmet visors were absolutely useless, so we spent hours taking tire spray and road debris to the face, which was cool. But we were used to it from last year, so we chugged along.

The first third of the trip was mostly the same as last year. During our planning phase, we had decided that the only part of the trip we really didn’t like was the middle third. The first and last everyone seemed to enjoy, so we left those alone. We didn’t get the cool sunrise that we were able to experience last year, nor did we get as nice riding weather through Bear Mountain in NY, but it was acceptable, and the roads were beginning to warm up and dry out, at least a bit. This put us into NJ on familiar roads, somewhere between suburbia and farm country.

About halfway through NJ was where the new “middle third” came into play. Last year, we were unhappy with our route through the suburbs of Philadelphia, and opted to kick our route about 5 miles further west than last year, to avoid some of the PA congestion, since we would inevitably be in this area between school bus and rush hour times. Mid-NJ and the first part of PA treated us to some glorious farm roads. Large sweeping hills with virtually no intersections, dotted with small farmhouse neighborhoods every few miles. This part of the trip was an absolute blast. As we got further into PA, the roads weren’t quite as enjoyable, but still miles better than what we experienced last time. By this point in time, one of us was having some scooter issues..

Now, Ben’s scooter had been making noise since last year. He had accidently gotten a small amount of lubricant on some of the CVT components, creating an irritating noise. Because of this, we had become accustomed to hearing an odd noise from Ben’s scooter, but it was beginning to get worse. At around 2:00pm, we decided to stop at a Wawa somewhere in PA, about an hour shy of the DE border to verify it was something in the CVT case. We pulled the variator off of the engine, completely exposing the crankshaft, and started the engine. The noise was still present, and much more brutal without the muffling of the variator and CVT cover. Oil was seeping out of the main seal, and the crank could be moved up and down by hand. The engine was completely shot. By some strange luck, this Wawa was directly across the street from the only U-Haul we recall passing all day long. And they happened to have a one-way box truck available to Ocean City, though the cost was less than ideal. Ben decided rather than to chance it on a rapidly deteriorating bottom-end, that he would take the U-Haul and finish the trip with air conditioning. And I don’t think anyone would blame him on that premise. So around 3:00pm, we pull out of the Wawa and head south.

The four of us continued on from this point, passing through West Chester, PA, eventually reaching the Delaware border near Wilmington. From this point, we had really great weather, thankfully. We had decided we wanted to take the Rt13 Bridge over the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, and decided not to listen to the GPS, as it repetitively demanded we were going the wrong way. Turns out, the Rt13 bridge is completely closed, and we had to take a sort-of lengthy detour back to where it wanted us originally. Not a huge deal, but another half hour of riding tacked on. The rest of the trip was a numb 5-hour ride down Rt1 and Rt13, with our throttles pinned, thanking mankind for creating podcasts. We did get a nice sunset, which helped to make up for the gloomy morning, rolling up to our condo at 8:20pm.

Our route that we picked this year was 13 miles longer than last year, a sacrifice we made to improve the ride. We left an hour earlier, and got there an hour later. The entire trip took us a grand total of 17 hours. Our total average speed (including stopped time) was 23.5mph, 1.5mph slower than last year. A lot of this is attributed to stops. I think we took more leg-stretch breaks than last year, and we spent about an hour working on Ben’s Ruckus, and getting the U-Haul loaded. Overall, not bad.

We ran 3 cameras for the majority of the trip, so there’s some great footage that I’m sifting through now. Hopefully in a couple weeks I’ll have something to show.

Since our largely successful ride to Ocean City, MD last year, we’ve become rather lax about the planning process this year. Things went almost too smoothly in 2017. We had some of the best weather we’ve had in ten years, we beat our estimated arrival time by an hour, we even pulled better fuel mileage than anticipated. It was a rather flawless experience, all considered, and because of that, we’ve all been pretty confident that it’ll be a piece of cake this year.

However, the current weather forecast is a grim reminder that it may not be..

We’re still 4 days away, and as anyone from New England knows, the only thing certain about a 4 day weather forecast is that it’s wrong. So we’re keeping our fingers crossed that this changes over the next few days. We’ve made the decision that we’re willing to accept some periodically bad weather for the ride down, as long as it isn’t a total washout, but we’ll worry more about that in the next few days when we get a more accurate forecast.

One thing to keep in mind about long-distance riding on a 50cc moped, is that the scooters aren’t exactly built for this purpose. I would bet that the average Ruckus owner doesn’t travel much outside a 10 mile radius from home-base, with at least 50% of these things spending their entire lives inside a private beach community or on a farm. The majority of these scooters are probably ridden and shut off before they even reach operating temperature. They’re designed for low-speed, short-distance transportation, as all small mopeds are. When you take something designed for this type of use, and run it at full throttle for 15 hours, covering an enormous amount of distance, you really need to make sure your ducks are all in a row regarding the up-keep. Obviously they can do it, since they did last year, but maintenance really needs to be a #1 priority. With the exception of Ben, who is hell-bent on riding down without changing a single thing from least year (oil included), we’re all doing varying degrees of maintenance in an attempt to minimize the likelihood of any hiccups. Oil, coolant, plug, air filter, fuel filter, brakes, clutch, suspension, electronics etc. are all items being addressed in preparation. A few of us even decided to venture down the road of lightened flywheels for this year’s trip.

Hopefully we’ll have a couple decent days before Wednesday to be able to put some road miles on them for a good shakedown ahead of time. But to be honest, the weather is what’s currently on my mind. We’re keeping an eye on it, and we’ll update everyone on Monday regarding our plan.

So, here we are, three and a half weeks away from H2Oi.

And for those who follow the happenings around the H2Oi name, you probably know by now that the organizers made the decision to move the actual show to Atlantic City, NJ for the “20^th anniversary of H2Oi,” which would have been the 21^st, had the ball not been dropped last year. But that’s neither here nor there at this point…

Seemingly, 90% of last year’s attendees of the cancelled show are going back to Ocean City, MD, and that 90% includes us.

This time last year, we had said that it would be awesome to try and make it from central CT to OCMD in one day on our basically-stock Honda Ruckus mopeds for that one year. Well, it went so well that we’ve decided to do it again.

So here’s the sparknotes for those who care:

All 5 of us who did it last year will be doing it again, all on the same scooters. We will also be doing it on a similar time frame, leaving very early on Wednesday morning, with a plan to be getting down there shortly after dark on Wednesday night. And, like last year, we will not be riding them back home.

What’s changing, however, is going to be the route that we’re going to take. Though there technically wasn’t anything wrong with our route last year, we want to try and follow the NJ coastline down to Cape May, and take the ferry from the southern tip of NJ to Bethany Beach, DE. Our (extremely vague) preliminary research makes it appear that we won’t really be saving any time, or any substantial mileage, but it gives us the opportunity to take a different route for a change of scenery, if nothing else. And because the major suburbia mecca outside of Philadelphia was a disaster in the late afternoon hours, and no one wants to do that again.

We’re going to run a bunch of cameras like last year, to gather footage for an overview video like last year, except we’ve since learned what works and what doesn’t, and plan to improve on our technique for round two.

We also don’t have a friend with a truck willing to pull an empty trailer down this year, so we’re working through our options for a return ride for the five of us plus scooters. So far, it seems like renting a Uhaul box van might be our best option, but we’ll finalize that plan in the next week or two.

So for the time being, stay tuned…

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — A man driving a modified, non street-legal car died Sunday evening after police say he was ejected in a crash.

Chesapeake police responded to Eden Way N. and Savory Crescent around 9 p.m. for a two-vehicle crash. Police initially said the crash involved a go-kart and a sedan.

Police issued a correction Monday morning that what was believed to be a go-kart was actually a “heavily modified” Honda Civic that was registered through the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, but was not street-legal.

The driver of the Honda was ejected after being hit by the sedan and pronounced dead at the scene. Police later identified the driver as 24-year-old Anthony Dillard.

Dillard’s social media accounts detail his love for what he called the “Kart Lyfe”.

Police are still investigating to determine if the modifications or speed contributed to the accident.

http://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/chesapeake/go-kart-driver-dies-after-being-hit-by-a-sedan-in-greenbrier/1134560955

Okay, a couple points I want to hit here…

First off, [assuming you watched the video in the link] I’m not sure why police who investigate auto accidents can be stupid enough to not recognize that this body-less Civic actually is a Civic, and not some elaborate VIN-stealing plot.  These people take home our tax dollars as “professional” accident investigators.  It’s not rocket science, guy, figure it out.  It’s a civic.

Update, after 45 seconds of “investigation,” I’ve come to the conclusion that this is a tube frame cart thing, build on top of a red Civic.  I’d like a salary for this shit, since I’m obviously doing a better job than the Chesapeake investigators:

Second and foremost, please, PLEASE stop taking your totaled cars and building jungle gyms around them.  98% of you are not engineers.  The physics of building essentially a tube frame car greatly exceed the know-how of even the good backyard mechanics.  You want to weld-in a roll bar?  Fine, but please stop there.  Don’t let your YouTube heroes influence you (see: Hoonigan; Cleetus McFarland).  This is literally your life.  And your life is more important than your Instagram followers.

My extremely limited roll cage knowledge from my drifting experience can immediately pick out some MAJOR design issues in this side shot.  And I don’t even know what I’m doing!

Side note: why waste your time building this elaborate disaster around a Civic in the first place?  Why not at least start with something right-wheel-drive?

This whole thing is very puzzling to me.

That is all..

So let’s take a second to think back maybe 10-15 years ago, flipping through Sport Compact Car, or Modified Mag or something, seeing these over the top machines that had it all.  These were the days of custom interior work, intense trunk-ruining sound systems, NOS fogger systems, T4 turbos, and flashy engine bays.  At one point in time, we all strived for that.  As time went on, we realized that the vast majority of us were not going to build custom dashboards, or spend months gluing together some MDF board to make some 3 dimensional subwoofer holder thing, but instead we would probably focus on performance, and let the less important stuff fall by the wayside.

Thankfully, for people like me who love to indulge in a good build thread, there are people out there like Mike O’Brien who has somehow managed to conquer all aspects of Sport Compact Car glory, but to modern standards.

This is what has been deemed the “MK2” Supra, though some Toyota gurus would correct you in saying that’s wrong, but too bad.  This old Toyota is powered by a big-turbo 1UZ Lexus V8, with lots of fancy plumbing work, incredible custom interior bits, immaculate body and paint work, all sitting on top of one-off CAD-generated suspension components, all created by the mastermind himself.  The attention to detail is unmatched

Really, I’m not here for a write-up, so I’m just going to dump some pics and give you a link to enjoy this to its full potential.

The attention to detail goes as far as this…

Yes, that’s a cantilever welding cart.

I could sit here and praise this guy up and down, all day long, but you really need to sit down and spend a few hours quickly browsing through this 111 page build thread.  For what it’s worth, this literally took me about a full week of casual surfing during off-hours at the office.  It’s incredible.

Mike’s (Supersubs’s) Big Boy Build

And just when you think this build is finished, Mike throws out some teasers of the next project..  I promise, this is not the last we’ll see of this guy…

I really want to praise Mike for not only his craftsmanship, but for his decision to use Flickr instead of the cucks over at Photobucket who have single-handedly ruined the internet over the past year (see: P500), but I’ll get further into that at another time.

FLICKR > PHOTOBUCKET

Expect some more dumps from my bookmarked, archived build-thread list.  This is just the tip of the iceberg..

1. Mazda Miata (NA & NB)

I specify NA & NB because the NC lost the feel of what made the Miata great.  The first two generations of the Miatas were a glorious introduction to the demographic of the midlife-crisising adult, stuck between a used foxbody Mustang and a third-hand Harley Baggerson.  They were extremely fun and easy to drive, great on gas (comparatively), and very affordable.  Because of this, Mazda sold quite a few of the Miatas, eventually developing quite a cult-following from weekend trackday brodads, which has inflated the price over the past few years.

2007: NAs in the $1,500 range, NBs in the $4,500 range

2017: NAs in the $3,000-5,000 range, NBs in the $5,000-8,000 range, some low mileage examples of both body styles coming in at over $10,000.

2. Acura NSX

The Acura (Honda) NSX has always kind of been the forgotten of the Japanese “sports cars” of the 90s.  It seemed slightly mute compared to some of the other things coming out of Japan at the time.  People ridiculed Honda for the use of the 3.0 V6, mockingly comparing it to an Acura Legend.  All that aside, this car set the bar very high for weight and rigidity in a sports car chassis, with an all-aluminum construction, nearly unheard of for Japan at the time.

2007: pre-facelifts could be had for $20,000, facelift models for $50,000

2017: pre-facelift models now starting around $40,000, facelifts creeping towards $100k

3. Ferrari 355

When most people hear Ferrari, they think unobtainable, but that’s often not the case.  As long as it isn’t a special edition and/or limited production model, it’s not immune to depreciation, and being Italian with a high MSRP, they have a long way to fall, and fall they do.  Many hail the 355 as the best sounding naturally aspirated V8 that Ferrari has ever created.  A more powerful 348, and a less-refined, raw older brother to the 360.  Downsides being that pretty much everything that has to be done to service these requires the motor to come out.

2007: these could be found for $30,000 and up

2017: it’s become rare to see these under $50k, with the average closer to $80k

4. Mazda RX-7 (FD3S)

These are unique, and I may be biased, because it’s the best looking car that mankind has ever created, but there was so little that the RX line shared with anything else out of Japan at the time.  All aluminum suspension arms, spinney Dorito engine, true sequential turbochargers, 4 piston front brakes, door handles hidden in the sills, etc.  It was lighter than almost everything it competed against, it obviously looked the part, and it sounded like something the world had never heard before.  Downside to these is that 100,000 miles is about all you’ll get out of 13B-REW before a rebuild, often much less if it’s a low mileage car that has been “garaged” (also known as: “sat for years with bone-dry apex seals”).  They also run hot as hell and are prone to horrible heat-soaking issues even on completely stock examples.  Cooling mods are a must for anyone getting into an FD3S.

2007: quality examples going for $10,000, clean shells for under $5,000 (the FD3S has always been a popular shell for swaps of all kinds)

2017: quality examples going for $20,000+, shells in any condition have gotten hard to find, rarely coming up for under $10,000

5. BMW M3 (E30)

This one frustrates me to no end.  I mean, I sort of get it..  It has an iconic racing history, it’s one of the few all-steel wide-body, boxy ‘80s “sports cars”, it had factory ITBs and fancy aero, so there are some cool aspects about this car.  But at the end of the day, it’s a rear wheel drive VW Jetta with a puzzling suspension design and an undersized engine that made cool noises.  Limited production and the weird E30 popularity amongst kids in recent years has driven these up and up and up in value.

2007: these could be had for $10,000, sometimes even less for a quality example

2017: cheapest I can find at a quick glance right now is $32,000 in the 150-200k mileage range.  If you want a sub-100k car, expect to pay over $50,000.  This infuriates me to even type these numbers out..

6. Nissan 240sx (S13)

whoops, wrong pic..

This was the affordable little brother to the 300zx line, featuring crappier build quality (though the ZXs didn’t have a lot to brag about in this category either), a pickup truck engine, an open differential, and automatic seatbelts that attempt to decapitate you every time you get in.  They also have a tendency to rot, and pretty badly at that.  The upside is that these things are infinitely fun to drive, and they can be molded into anything you desire.  Aside from drifting, where most of them end up, they do extremely well in all other facets of the racing world.

2007: mediocre examples for <$1,000, prestine examples for $3,000

2017: mediocre examples for $3,000, pristine examples for $6,000+, with dwindling availability

So H2Oi is over, and it’s been about a week of reality since.  My body has finally recovered, for the most part at least..

Did we make it?

Yes.  Yes we did.  On just shy of two hours of sleep, we showed up casually late (4:15am) to the rendezvous point at a local 24 hour gas station before starting this endeavor.  We were pretty stoked the couple days leading up to this point, as the weather was supposed to be around 80* and sunny.  However we didn’t take into account what a dense 60* fog in the pitch black would do to the early part of our venture.  In the couple miles we had ridden to get to this point, we were already soaking wet.  It was not a great start.  We pulled out of the gas station a minute shy of 4:30 with intentions of riding straight through until the New York border, 75 or so miles westbound.  To save you the long-winded and graphic description of what sitting on a moped seat for 15 hours does to the backside of the human body, I’ll just give you the sparknotes by state:

CT: (left at) 4:30am

This was the most miserable part of the trip.  We were absolutely soaked from the fog, as we all wore jeans instead of some water-resistant pants, which proved to be a powerful mistake.  We got almost nothing for GoPro footage, as the water pouring off of the lenses made them pretty useless.  We also learned that the far west part of CT is made up of drastic elevation changes and third-world quality pavement, and navigating this in the pitch black with dense fog was actually terrifying.  A couple close calls happened in this first stretch.  This was by far our least favorite part of the whole ride.

NY: 7:00am

Once we crossed into New York, things started to improve.  It was still foggy and cool at the beginning, but we could see now.  That was a plus.  Also the road conditions improved dramatically.  We crossed over the Bear Mountain Bridge, which was probably the coolest 15 minutes of riding I have ever done.  It was foggy on one side of the bridge, bright and sunny on the other, immediately followed by a long stretch of winding mountain roads, overlooking the Hudson valley shortly after sunrise.  This was awesome, and I think all of us would gladly make the trek back out here to ride these sections again.

NJ: 9:15am

For being such an awful state, New Jersey was almost as beautiful to ride through as New York was.  Our decision to stay west of Newark certainly paid off here.  We had no traffic issues at all, and the backroads that we were riding were just awesome.   A nice mix of suburbia and rural New Jersey.  However, by the time we were about 2/3 of the way through New Jersey, that nice mix had faded.  We became all too familiar with US-202, which is a strange lovechild of a full-blown interstate highway and an over-commercialized state road.  I also didn’t realize how long we were going to be in New Jersey.  For some reason, I had this idea that we were just passing through a corner of the state, but really we were stuck here for a full 60 miles, which translates to an eternity on a moped.

PA: 12:30pm

This 202 disaster continued into Pennsylvania.  We found ourselves being directed off of 202, weaving through a maze of suburbia school bus stops (due to the time of day); just to end up back on 202 again.  This was the most traffic we had experienced on the whole trip, which was drastically bringing down our average speed, and pushing out our arrival time.  It also began to get hot.  Up until this point, we were riding with jackets and had no issue with it, even in the direct sunlight.  But eventually, the sun combined with the hours of stop-and-go traffic started wearing us down.  This is about where Ben and I began experiencing CVT problems.  His being an audible rotational squeal, mine being a tick, accompanied with a drastic decline of top speed, which would worsen from this point forward.   More on this later.  We made the decision not to pull off the CVT covers on the side of the road, not like there was anything we could do anyways.  So we just kept riding.

DE: 4:00pm

Delaware was long.  We bounced between Route 1 and Route 13 for the entire state of Delaware, northern tip to southern tip.  This was literally 100 miles of full-throttle, on flat roads, lined with Jesus billboards, splitting hundred-acre corn fields.  At first this was mind-numbing.  We had been on the scooters for 12 hours at this point, and while the stop-and-go of PA was cumbersome, it kept us awake.  By the time we were halfway through Delaware, we did get to see an awesome farm-country sunset over the fields.  The temperature had come down a little and it began to be enjoyable again.  We decided to forego our last planned stop and went 2.5 hours straight from our last fill up.  We were falling asleep, but passing Rehoboth and Bethany Beach restored some excitement, as we were getting close.

MD: 7:15pm

We crossed the MD line as we rolled into Ocean City.  MD barely counts as part of the journey, since you cross the DE/MD state line at 146^th street in Ocean City.  We literally just rode 99 blocks from the line to our condo, probably totaling less than a half hour.  Thus the MD stretch was great, because it didn’t really exist.

47^th St: 7:40pm

Although exhausted and sore, we were in better shape upon arrival than we initially anticipated.  We also beat our estimated arrival by an hour, and we even beat our predicted fuel mileage by 10-15mpg.  General rule of thumb with strange endeavors like this is that it’s going to take way longer than you anticipate, 100% of the time.  I guess we broke that rule.

What Broke:

Nothing, really.  However, both Ben and I suffered from self-inflicted inconveniences.  His CVT squeal was caused because he used a small amount of grease to lube a variator component, which eventually flung some onto the belt.  Audibly irritating, albeit no impact on performance.  Mine was a bit worse.  I replaced a cracked clutch shoe two days before we left on this trip, and like an idiot, I pushed the new shoes onto the pins, and never put the retaining clips back on.  I then rode 400 miles with no hardware holding my clutch shoes to the clutch mechanism.  It backed itself out a ways and caused a substantial drop in top speed, and eventually wore a good grove in my drive-face.  A quick trip to Ace on 68th street and we were back in business, though this required some more work once we got home.  Morgan also got a flat, but that was a bit different.

Over the past week and a half, I have been going through almost 11 hours of GoPro footage from this trip.  I am putting together a not-so-short video that covers our ride down and daily-driving Ruckuses for the week in OCMD.  This video will better encompass the undertaking than any explanation that I could type up.

Expect to see this posted on Monday 10/16.

Moral of the story:  You can take a 50cc Honda Ruckus from CT to Ocean City, MD, average over 100mpg, look cool as shit, and have a blast doing it.  If this isn’t a testament to Honda reliability, I’m not sure what is.

Well, we’re in Ocean City. The scooters made it here under their own power, with some (hopefully) minor transmission issues along the way. It took us less time than we thought, which was a treat, doing 400 miles in 15 hours. I’ll update tomorrow with some real info. In the meantime I’m going to sleep for a good 18 hours.

And we’re off! Starting off with a quick fuel up at mile 2. 379 more to go! ?