What do Ocean City Scooter Shops and Unicorns have in common?

They're both myths!

Earlier this month Heidi and I went down to see the parents in OC. Of course our primary goals where beach time and wedding details, but scooters are always in the back of my mind somewhere. haha

Sure enough we saw a scooter making it's way up the bus/bike lanes every few blocks, but they all seemed to be 50cc-off-brands, and the bus lane driving led me to think these were unsure tourists with rentals.

On one of our errands we pulled up to a strip mall right across from the condo, dad needed to run into the hardware store, and as I waited I noticed the sign next door, "Scooter Rentals and Sales". Oh cool, how coincidental! So being the nice guy I am I decided I would come back later on my own, and not bore everyone else.

So the next day bright and early I get up and head back to the shop all excited to see scooters! I pull up and there is a little pack of no-name 50cc's out front, these are obviously the rentals, I walk in and I'm in a T-Shirt Shop!?!?! Confused I look around thinking maybe I walked in the wrong door?? I ask the lady at the counter, is this the scooter shop?... yes she says... do you also do sales i ask... yes they sell the brand they rent, and also sell the rentals at the end of the season... oh ok, do you do any other brands like vespa, genuine, honda, yamaha???.... I kid you not I got the head-cocked-sideways-high-pitched-dog-whistle look like I had just tried to explain physics to a 4 year old. In my own internal dialog I am already trying to figure out how to back out of this place as quickly as possible! As I leave though, based on what I was asking for she says there is another place further down coastal highway. So it's early and I spent all of 5 minutes in this T-Shirt/Beach Junk/Scooter Store, so I decide to head down and check it out.

I'm heading down the road, I see the street! I see the sign! I pull in! ... it's a bicycle shop with scooters out front :( Again, no name 50cc scoots. The feeling of disappointment again washes over me, but this is at least a bike shop, two-wheels right, we're getting warmer right? So I go in and talk to the guy at the counter, and while again this was a merchant supplementing his income with the scooter boom, he was more helpful than the T-Shirt Lady. He told me that if I wanted an actual scooter dealer I'd need to head out to Salisbury, because like him, all the scooter places in OC only delt in the 50cc's because no dealer license was required.

So there it was... the transient nature of Ocean City's occupants lends itself to tourist rentals only... this is not the case however 40 minutes north in Rehoboth Beach DE! This small quiet beach town is just that, a town, not some rental tourist trap. Saturday night we finally got my parents up to the restaurant on Rehoboth's Main Street where they will be paying for our rehearsal dinner in just over a month. After dinner we walked the length of their main street and every block had clusters of parked scooters! Everywhere you looked there were real brand scooters, Genuine, Vespa, Aprilia Oh My!, it was like walking through the ultimate scooter showroom! (I even saw a few Vino's) Obviously I had no way of knowing where all these came from, but obviously there is a real scooter dealer somewhere in SLD!

Oh back to OC for a second... now I was interested in perhaps picking up a end of the season rental on the cheap, why not? Both places quoted me up to $800 for an end of the season rental sale. I was stunned! It's a 50cc off brand that you've let tourists beat the crap out of for 4 hot months at probably $30/hour... this thing has long paid for itself and you want to sell it off for an amount close to fair market value for a new one!?!? Oh god get me outta here, you aren't scooter people at all!