Scooters #8216;wow#039; audience during annual parade
Published 12:00 am Thursday, December 8, 2005
More than a dozen of the shiny new Venice TN'G scooters won by “My Kind of Town” contestants and audience members took to the streets – Commerce St., to be exact – as part of the annual Christmas parade in Greenville last Saturday. The scooters, all 179 of them, arrived in town in mid-November.
Greenville Equipment Center owner Allen Phelps and his team have been busy ever since, assembling, testing and doing documentation on the scooters. Day by day, the new scooters have been ready for pick up - and some owners couldn't resist the opportunity to be a part of the parade.
Nancy Idland, Olivia Idland and Kristi Mayes were among those showing off their new rides Saturday morning.
“I just got mine last night…I love it,” Nancy Idland said with a grin as she paused along the parade route.
Mayes didn't “pop a wheelie,” but she show off some smooth moves astride her Venice as she revved up the scooter's two-stroke engine and took off.
Spectators like Cindy Cartwright know just how much fun a Venice can be.
“I rode mine all around on Thanksgiving Day.
They are so much fun,” Cartwright said.
Other parade goers felt a twinge of envy at the sight of the sleek, European-style scooters. “Those are darling…I know everyone is going to enjoy them,” Katie Holcomb said.
Some are putting their scooters under someone else's tree this Christmas. Colin MacGuire and his mother, Nina, picked up their scooters last Friday, with plans to give them to the family's grandchildren.
“These are going to my daughter Carolyn's children…these are nicer gifts I could usually give them,” Nina MacGuire said with a bright smile as the scooters were loaded unto a pickup truck at Greenville Equipment Center.
Phelps said he hoped to have all the scooters ready for pickup by the end of this week.