Ten Years in Pōneke: Part Four — Throwing Down the Escooter Gauntlet

Or, how far can you trav­el on a Flamin­go before it dies on you? 

A Pōneke East­er Exper­i­ment.

Do not try this at home. It’s not whol­ly dan­ger­ous, but it is a lit­tle fool­hardy. Most­ly it’s just time con­sum­ing and will make your legs ache.

I’ve been scoot­ing ever since I was a kid. I was a big fan of my push scoot­er when I was younger — much more so than my bike, and these days, I use Pōneke’s escoot­ers every sin­gle day.

I’m pret­ty sure I’m one of the most pro­lif­ic escooter­ers in the city — if not the most pro­lif­ic. That’s based in fact, and sci­ence and stuff.

Lime emailed me one year say­ing “con­grats, you’re part of the top 1% of scoot­er users in the world” which was­n’t exact­ly a com­pli­ment, but I had trav­elled 35km around Low­er Hutt on an escoot­er in one day that year so they were prob­a­bly right.

Y’all know me, I love a lit­tle quest. I’ve been think­ing about this one for a while.

In 2025, I’m doing ten things to cel­e­brate liv­ing in Pōneke for ten years. There’ll be sto­ries. Pics. Non­sense. Check out the series here.

How far can you trav­el on a Flamin­go escoot­er?

As it turns out, fur­ther than you might think.

My goal was sim­ple: get a scoot­er from a drop point with a com­plete­ly full bat­tery and ride it till it died.

I had three rules:

no stop­ping

no more than one foot on the ground at a time if slowing/curb jump­ing

if my life/welfare or some­one else’s life/welfare is at risk, stop imme­di­ate­ly

That last rule in par­tic­u­lar was for me. I’m stub­born and a masochist. I would con­tin­ue through my dum­b­assery and injure myself — I’ve done it before. I may have pos­si­bly bro­ken my knee in 2022 doing so dur­ing my one of four falls in sev­en years of rid­ing — but we’ll nev­er know.

I also want­ed to make sure that my desire to do a quest did not over­rule my desire to be mind­ful and care­ful of my scoot­er tech­nique.

The thing is about escoot­ing is that peo­ple think it’s lame (valid) and it’s easy (not cor­rect). It’s easy to be okay at it, but it’s a lot hard­er to be gen­uine­ly good at it.

Not to get all arro­gant here, but unlike most phys­i­cal things, I’m good at it. I’ve fall­en off four times in sev­en years of scoot­ing essen­tial­ly every day. I know how to coax scoot­ers up tricky hills, down chal­leng­ing slopes and on rough ter­rain.

No word of a lie, I moved house from Te Aro to Mount Cook last year car­ry­ing every­thing I owned except my bed and my 80L tubs on my back.

I also once scootered from Te Aro to Pukerua Bay because the trains weren’t run­ning.*

It’s a gen­uine­ly phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence.

It burns calo­ries, improves your bal­ance, core and coor­di­na­tion, and is fuck­ing exhaust­ing to do for long peri­ods. As I type this, I des­per­ate­ly want a nap, because like dri­ving, you’re in con­trol of a vehi­cle, and you’re active­ly watch­ing for haz­ards and react­ing in real time whilst you do the con­trol­ling, whilst absorb­ing shock through your legs from the ground.

But I digress.

On East­er Sun­day I ran an escoot­er bat­tery down with­out stop­ping or touch­ing the ground. Here’s how I did it.

It’s East­er Sun­day. I’ve been toss­ing this idea around in my head since Christ­mas. I could­n’t do it then cause my chron­ic fatigue was flar­ing, but today I feel… pass­able. The con­crete out­side my apart­ment win­dow is wet from overnight rain, but it’s not active­ly rain­ing.

It’s not per­fect con­di­tions, but I’ll be fine.

I pick up a scoot­er from the drop zone by the Fresh Choice on Abel Smith Street. The roads aren’t super busy, but I know I’ll have to have some luck cross­ing things like Karo Dri­ve and Brook­lyn Road when I get to them.

I’m in luck to cross the motor­way, the traf­fic light is green and I whizz on by. It takes a lit­tle effort and tim­ing to get all the way to Brook­lyn with­out stop­ping, but I man­age. When I repeat this same trip on Tues­day night, it’s not near­ly as easy. Plan­ning. It works!

Head­ing down the hill into Hap­py Val­ley is no pic­nic, as it starts to rain again. I briefly con­sid­er aban­don­ing the quest, but it’s a quest, rather than a fun lit­tle jaunt, so I keep going, get­ting absolute­ly drenched but hav­ing a decent time regard­less.

Ōwhiro Bay’s an odd lit­tle place. They’ve been recent­ly cam­paign­ing for bet­ter bus ser­vices (which they need). I most­ly know the area from the time I walked six hours and then had to take a dis­used path from the moun­tains down into Red Rocks and had to free­hand climb down bits of it (0/10 don’t rec­om­mend).

Around Ōwhiro Bay, dodg­ing past folk run­ning and the occa­sion­al car, I whizz on past Island Bay and straight on towards Houghton. This sec­tion is hard­er as there’s a lot more peo­ple about, and road­works. There’s a bit of work site that’s cur­rent­ly being held up by wood­en beams over­head — too high for me stand­ing approx 5 ft 10 on an escoot­er — but I duck under them all and also don’t fall off at the same time! Win win win.

Bays pass by in quick suc­ces­sion. Princess, Wait­a­ha, Lyall. I’m run­ning at half emp­ty bat­tery-wise — sure­ly there’s not much of my trip left?

Not so.

There’s road­works on Stew­art Duff Dri­ve towards the air­port, but for­tu­nate­ly it’s qui­et enough that I can duck past two dogs and their own­er, and make it into the air­port prop­er. I stare, for a moment, still scooter­ing.

Pret­ty sure half the golf course had­n’t been turned into a carpark when I was last here… but I’m not sure which is more of an envi­ron­men­tal calami­ty.

It’s at this moment that I realise I’ve not eat­en for hours and I am spin­ny. Quest aban­doned for the moment — sue me, I’m more of a haz­ard if my head­’s not on straight, I buy an over­ex­pen­sive sand­wich and con­tin­ue my quest, less like­ly to fall off in the mid­dle of the road.

Sure­ly the dang scoot­er will conk out some­where in Kil­birnie. Right? Right?

No.

Through the run­way tun­nel, and down the Kil­birnie bike path. It’s not rain­ing any­more, and this is the eas­i­est bit of the city to scoot­er, so I’m hav­ing a blast. Still haven’t fall­en off yet. Yay me.

Up the hill, cross­ing into New­town. The scooter’s at 1.5 bat­tery bars left, and I’m won­der­ing if it’ll make it, going slow­er and slow­er and slow­er as it goes… but it does! We slide on down­hill, pick­ing up speed, pass­ing peo­ple com­ing out of East­er Sun­day church ser­vices. The gods, whomev­er they are, are smil­ing on me today.

The roads are decent­ly clear through New­town, and down towards the Basin. I get incred­i­bly lucky with the lights at the cor­ner towards the tun­nel, and escape onto Kent Ter­race. Home stretch, right?

You’d think.

I’ve been stand­ing for at least an hour now, and my thighs and knees are killing me. Love scooter­ing, but no joke, it does get kind of painful when you’re not real­ly per­mit­ted to move.

Luck with the lights a hand­ful more times gets me to the inter­sec­tion of Majorib­anks and Kent Ter­race. This time, I have to wait. I do lit­tle cir­cles on the scoot­er as I do to keep my bal­ance, before the lights flick green and off we go again!

Along the path, cross­ing at Cable Street, and then out onto the won­der­ful, flat stretch of con­crete by Wai­t­an­gi Park. I’ve total­ly for­got­ten it’s Water­front Mar­ket day, and though I’m tempt­ed, I do not stop. We’ve still got a bar left of bat­tery. I can coax more out of this.

Duck­ing past Cir­ca, around Whareipo Lagoon and cross­ing Jer­vois Quay by the park, I fol­low the Com­mon­wealth Walk­way (yes, it has a name) through the carpark, cross­ing Cable St again, and down through Bond Street, head­ing south along Lom­bard.

The scoot­er slows… omi­nous­ly.

One bar remain­ing. A lit­tle more… sure­ly…

One cross of Man­ners St, about ten metres lat­er and the scoot­er slows to a halt.

I’ve done it! One full escoot­er bat­tery deplet­ed entire­ly, with­out stop­ping (bar­ring y’know the health thing), falling or putting both feet on the ground at the same time.

What a rush.

I have com­plet­ed my quest. What did I learn from it? Not a whole lot. Per­haps slight­ly bet­ter scoot­er con­trol in wet weath­er. Def­i­nite­ly a lot of prac­tise and care around obsta­cles. I think I’m a bet­ter escoot­er rid­er after this quest than I was before­hand.

Leav­ing the scoot­er where it is, I walk south down Vic­to­ria Street towards my home. It’s been a wild trip, but I’m pleased I made it.

Total dis­tance scootered: 24.53km

Total time tak­en to scoot­er that dis­tance: About an hour and a half.

I’m not affil­i­at­ed with Flamin­go, I just real­ly like their scoot­ers! I was very mind­ful to take utmost care when doing this quest, and only scootered at top speed when I was in com­plete­ly clear peo­ple-less areas that were dry. I was also wear­ing a hel­met and pro­tec­tive gear the entire time.

Don’t try this at home. 

I would also like to note that the amount an escoot­er bat­tery depletes depends on what you’re doing with it. I could have done this entire quest on the flat ground and got anoth­er 5–10km out of the bat­tery, but I think that’s fun­da­men­tal­ly unre­al­is­tic to the nature of scooter­ing in Pōneke.

 

Some oth­er escoot­er high­lights

- 46km trip from Auck­land CBD to Rose­bank and back via Mt Eden

- The one time Google Maps took me down Kio Road in Kio Bay (it has ten switch­backs)

- The one time Google Maps took me down Kai­wharewhara Bri­dle Track from Khan­dal­lah to the CBD in the pitch dark­ness and I thought I was going to die

- Hav­ing to back­track my way back along a seri­ous­ly busy road with a dodgy scoot­er bat­tery cause half of Seav­iew is no-go zones.

- Scoot­ing the length of the Avon Riv­er in Christchurch and then most of the way back too.

Oth­er notes

*Afor­men­tioned air­port break.

**Exclud­ing that tiny sec­tion of road between Glen­side and Taka­pu Road — you can’t take escoot­ers through there (yet).