As an American, I cannot understand the European fascination with scooters (bromfietsen).  However, there is one thing about scooters that I love:  the smell of their exhaust (I'm not joking).

When I smell the exhaust of a scooter here on the streets of Amsterdam, my mind immediately takes me back to a hot July day at the Jamestown Reservoir, in North Dakota.  I'm probably about 12 years old.  My arms are skinny and shivering -- both from the evaporation of lake water and from the rush of adrenaline that has flooded my system -- but I'm having the time of my life.  I'm clutching the handlebars of a jet-ski, borrowed from my Great Uncle Si.  I'm revving the engine, waiting for it to pull me forward and up, up, up out of the water -- to skim across the surface of the lake like a superhero.

The smell of the exhaust -- produced by the burningof whatever fuel it must be that powers both late-1980s model jet-skis and modern-day scooters -- is exactly the same.