Say Hello to Lionel!

For my personal project I decided to give up my car for a semester. A few days before school started up again I bought a 1986 Tomos a3 (that's a moped) and was already rebuilding it when the project was assigned. I'm proud to say tonight, almost three and a half weeks after I bought the moped, it is running! I broke it down, repainted everything, put a brand new engine in, and rewired the whole thing. Basically, I replaced everything on it except the transmission. It was a long process, but I look forward to sharing how it got from this...

to this...

 to this!

Now the hard part begins! Not using my car will be challenging, but I hope to show that people on a low income can afford cheap (and stylish!) transportation. This semester I will track my mpg, cost of maintaining, the cost and time spent of rebuilding, and test the distance one can travel on this. I also hope to discover how much it can carry. For example, if I lived in a food desert, how many trips would I need to make to the next town to get a week's worth of groceries home?

Here's a video of my partner, Paxton, riding the bike. Rudy, our dog, wants to ride too.

Oh, and his name is Lionel, because Lionel Ritchie had the number one song the year it was built, 1986. So if you see me riding around town, just say... 

My actual bumper sticker