Motorcycles in Tainan - HsinChu

In 1994 and 1995, Ely, Eli, Florence and I lived in HsinChu, Taiwan. Florence and I worked at the National Center for High Performance Computing in the HsinChu Science Park. Ely did 2nd and 3rd grade and Eli did 3rd and 4th grade at the Science Park Bilingual School.

While in HsinChu, we had 2 vehicles. One was a brand new Honda Civic.

This was an excellent car and is still occasionally running in KaoHsiung. Traffic was bad in HsinChu, and after one incident, I knew it was time to get out. I was cut off in a traffic jam once on GuangFu road and I was so mad a purposely inched my car onto his bumper and started pushing his car with mine. This must of scared the shit out of him and I was ready to get out of the car right then and start a fight. Road rage, we've all been there.

The other "vehicle" was a scooter whose only saving virtue was that it was cheap. It was faster than a bicycle but not by much. The brakes were past almost gone, luckily with traffic, going fast didn't happen often. I had a pair of wingtip shoes with thick soles that I wore holes in using them to stop the scooter. A couple of times I skidded on sand on the blacktop and laid the scooter down, good thing it
couldn't go very fast.

One time, I rode the scooter to the QingHua bus station in HsinChu to take the bus to Taipei. When I got back from Taipei, someone had stolen the scooter and I had to walk about 2 miles back home. The next day, Eli and Ely saw the scooter abandoned in a graveyard next to our house. Even the thieves had dumped that piece of shit. Anyway, I got it back and used it until we left.  I feel sorry for whoever got that scooter after me.

When ever I got in the car I used the seat belt aqnd when I rode the scooter I used the helmet. But when I got in the car I thought I should be wearing a helmet too. And when I got on the scooter, I found myself looking for a seatbelt.

I never had a picture of that scooter, but on the streets of Tainan, I looked for something similar. In 1994, it was already an old scooter, that similar ones are still running in Tainan shows that Taiwanese never throw out what's working.
Here what that old scooter looked like.

 

The model name was "CABIN", kind of unexciting.