December 23rd, 2006
Personal Vespa Failure
I often blog about stupid things that kill IT projects. This post describes how I almost killed my Vespa scooter today.
I live in Boston (actually Brookline, which is almost an extension of Boston), and often ride a Vespa on short trips around town. Many times it’s faster than driving, it saves gas, and is definitely lots of fun.
Today, I went to visit my Tibetan friend, Tulku Thondup, in Cambridge, which is a few miles from Brookline. Tulku was born into a nomadic family in eastern Tibet, went to India as a refugee in the late fifties, and eventually settled in Cambridge where he taught at Harvard University. A brilliant Buddhist scholar, he is a prolific author and travels the world teaching and presenting workshops. Eventually, I may post pictures about the trip I took to Tibet a few years ago with Tulku and a few other friends.
Along the way to Cambridge, I stopped at a gas station to put air in the tires and check the oil. Since I try to maintain my faithful steed meticulously, I braved greasy hands and added oil. Bad move on my part. Why bad, you ask? Because by mistake I added the oil into the gas tank. (Don’t ask how it happened, it just did.)
Well, I thought, this is no big deal since the oil will burn off as I ride. Yeah, well it was a good plan for about a mile, until I reached Harvard Square, and the thing sputtered and died. I called Tulku to cancel today’s visit, and resigned myself to pushing a dead scooter several miles back home. This was not a thrilling prospect, to say the least.
To make a long story short, I coaxed the thing back to a semi-living state, and rode it directly to the Vespa dealer in Boston. Tonight, it remains hospitalized, preparing to undergo emergency cleaning of internal systems, which I hope will take place tomorrow.
And the moral of this sad tale of woe: whether in regards to IT projects or Vespa scooters, sometimes bad things happen and the best you can do is clean up the mess later.
Michael Krigsman is CEO of Asuret, Inc., a software and consulting company dedicated to reducing software implementation failures. Click here to discuss this post with him on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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