After 5 weeks in Sebastapol, I bid farewell to my kind ZAP colleagues and my beloved Power Bike and headed off, with my suitcase in one hand and a Zappy, generously entrusted to me by the company in the other, to help spread the 'e' word in San Francisco. My scooter was to provide me with a novel means of making new friends. I would 'zap' my way to parties and place it next to me like most girls would a bag or coat.

I was frequently upstaged by it. At one of many memorable drinks parties on the roof of the Industry Standard, I proudly introduced my ZAPPY to a group of strangers I'd just stumbled upon. They were visibly impressed and were eager for a test drive outside. One guy was keen to set up some kind of business plan to sell them. Amazing what a couple of vodka and tonics can do! I never heard from him again. Though none of the group was prepared to buy one I felt I'd genuinely enlightened them about the amazing advances in zero-emission technology being implemented on their doorstep.
I am pleased to report that 2 years later, the San Francisco dot-com crowd has finally caught up with me! Thought I'd blow my own trumpet there!
It was thanks in part to my eye-catching electric scooter, that one of the group offered me a room rent-free in his SF apartment on condition he could borrow the ZAPPY! Cool. It was like my badge of honour; some have a Gucci / Prada handbag, others have a polluting, cliched, status-symbol BMW. I had my zero-emission, almost silent, electric scooter. Having spent 5 weeks riding electric bikes and scooters, it was time to meet the big boys, the long-range electric car! So I took the ferry across the Bay to Calstart, a company devoted to developing alternative clean transportation technology in Alameda to check out those cool sports cars I'd read about 5 months ago on the Web in the UK.