How My New Scooter Became My New Best Friend At College

College is expensive.  I know, shocking, right?  I did pretty well though, and managed to get through three years’ worth of classes before running out of money.

One thing I knew I didn’t want to do was take a year off to work and save up for the big push across the finish line, so, in desperation, I sold my car.  That got me the money I needed for tuition, and I figured I could just take an Uber anywhere I needed to go. 

Problem solved, or so I thought

It turned out that while Uber was super convenient, it was also a lot more expensive than I had counted on.  On an average month, I found myself spending two hundred bucks, and sometimes, more than that! The added expense was killing me and I knew it wouldn’t be sustainable over the course of the whole school year, so I started looking for some other solution, which is what led me to looking at scooters in the first place.

I care about the environment so I thought an eco-friendly solution to my problem would be good.  I thought about it for more than a week before settling on the Widewheel Pro model from fluidfreeride.  I’m kind of a klutz though, and I figured the nice wide wheels would help me keep my balance as I tried to get around on the thing.  It just seemed like a good temporary solution for my transportation needs. Fast enough for campus, small, portable, and a whole lot cheaper than replacing my car would have been, and that’s what really sold me on the idea.

Campus 

I didn’t really have a lot of places I needed to go from one week to the next, but I did need something that was robust and reliable enough to help get me from one end of the campus to the other, and to get me down to my off-campus job and back, so after one more round of research and reading every review I could find, I took the plunge.

I have to say, this adult scooter impressed me pretty much from the start.  It was bigger than I thought it would be, but still small enough that I could fold it up easily and keep it out of the way when I was in class or at work, and I didn’t look or feel like a complete dork when I was riding around on it which was something I had been a little worried about. And speaking of adult scooters, there is a model with three wheels, which has great characteristics, so make sure to click here and learn more about it. 

My initial test drive dispelled any nervousness I had about using the scooter on a daily basis.  The wheels were comfortably wide and gave it a feeling of stability. People who are more graceful or have better balance might be fine on one of the other models with narrower wheels, but I felt that the Widewheel was the right model for me. 

At first the throttle felt a little jerky but after a little while, I was comfortable enough to zip from one place to the next without even thinking about it.

That’s the thing too, it is fairly zippy!  I figured the top speed of 26 miles per hour was mostly a marketing gimmick, and that no way could it actually go that fast and even if it did, you certainly wouldn’t want to, but nope. 

Those dual motors it sports are powerful and this little scooter will absolutely fly when you open it all the way up.  Even better, those extra wide wheels give you the confidence to do that without worrying that you’ll lose your balance as it’s accelerating.  In less than twenty minutes, I was moving at top speed without even batting an eye.

I was used to spending fifteen or twenty minutes getting from one end of campus to the other, but on my new scooter, I could make the trip in about five minutes.  On days when I couldn’t afford to take an Uber to work, the walking trip took the better part of an hour, but on the scooter, I could make it in about ten minutes.  Even better than saving me money every month, it was saving me time, and that meant more time to study and more time to sleep in!

Exams

 

 

Not long before midterms, my scooter actually saved the day.  In one of the business classes I was taking, we had been working on a project and on presentation day, I left a jump drive I needed back at the dorm and we were slated to do our presentation that day.

If I’d had to walk back to the dorm to get it and then hoof it back to class, we wouldn’t have had time to make our presentation and it would have killed our grade (which might have delayed graduation – something so horrible that I don’t even want to think about!). I was able to zip back to the dorm, grab the drive and get back just in the nick of time, and that’s not the only time it saved the day.

Work

 

Prior to getting the scooter, deciding if I could afford to take extra shifts on the fly was a dicey proposition.  Usually, my boss needed an answer right away on whether or not I could take an extra shift and I’d have to factor in the cost of the Uber to see if it was even worth getting a lift to come in or not.  Most days, he couldn’t wait for me to walk there, so that was out of the question.

With the scooter though, it was a no-brainer, and the more extra shifts I picked up, the faster I would be able to pay it off, so it helped on that front too. 

Now, I just graduated, and I decided not to sell the scooter.  Yeah, it’ll take me a little longer to save up for a decent car, but I don’t care.  I just love my Wide Wheel! it’s just too useful and practical to give up, and look, with the coronavirus pandemic raging, it’s just a safer alternative. 

Think about it:  Why risk public transportation?  Why risk using a shared scooter, or carpooling right now?  The Coronavirus casts a long shadow and it will probably continue to do so for quite some time to come.  Meanwhile though, we all still need supplies. There are “necessary outings” that still have to be made.  Why not do so in safety? And also do so in a more environment-friendly way,

If I need to go down to the grocery store to pick something up, it’s easy to do, and since it can go more than twenty miles on a charge, I don’t have to keep it plugged in constantly to be sure it will get me where I want to go – that’s a good thing because in addition to being kind of a klutz, I’m also a bit of a scatterbrain and sometimes I forget to plug it in!  Bottom line: I love my scooter!

About Suzan Vega