My gears are starting to drive me crazy. I can't get the Vespa up to speed without the gears slipping. It is hard to get a grip on how well the engine is running when you can't get a sustained acceleration.

A friend was supposed to come over last night to help me with it, but he was unable to make it. I went on line to see what needed to be done. Yep, you need to have two people to pull this off. Because you have to keep tension on two cables at the rear of the bike while holding the shifter at the front of the bike all the while tightening some nuts at the rear, you need two people -- really it wouldn't hurt to have three!

I'm also having trouble with my lighting system. The front headlight keeps blowing. Somewhere there must be a short. The problem is that when the headlight blows it has a tendency to blow all the other bulbs. To make matters worse, I can't find any bulbs! There appears to be a shortage of these 12v bulbs. I've tried several online sources and while they are very quick to try to help me, they simply don't have them in stock. I'm tempted to convert the headlight housing into something that can handle a bulb readily available at your local auto shop.

Because of the issues, I didn't drive the Vespa to work yesterday. However, I still had several people stop me to talk about it. Sure enough there was someone who said, "You know I have a scooter at home. I bought it from a friend of my son who needed some money. I've never even started it -- but that looks like fun. I think I'll give it a try."

Hopefully, Mike will be able to come by this evening and help me get those gears fixed. The weather is just so beautiful here. I hate to have it just sitting there.