There are tours that go wrong. And then there are tours that achieve a level of catastrophic failure so spectacular, so relentlessly inventive in their disasters, that you almost have to admire them.
This was one of those tours.
1,400 km. 5 days. Two companions. One broken knee. One destroyed clutch. One Vespa abandoned at a repair shop in the Italian Alps. And one friend who spent the entire journey home complaining I was going too fast.
Some years you should just stay home and drink espresso at the bar around the corner.
Me. My Bajaj 177. And two friends from my newly founded club — including one particularly enthusiastic member who weighed somewhere between 120 and 140 kg and had decided that his Vespa Cosa 125, badly tuned and basically wheezing, was perfectly adequate for crossing the Alps in autumn.
Reader, it was not.
The Stilfser Joch. 2,758 metres above sea level. 48 hairpin bends. One of the most iconic mountain passes in Europe.
For my companion and his asthmatic Cosa, it was essentially Everest. The scooter — already struggling on flat roads — faced the ascent like a man being asked to run a marathon in flip-flops. I watched from behind as it slowed. And slowed. And then stopped.
I took over. I forced the Cosa up the Stilfser Joch in first and second gear, inch by painful inch, while its owner watched from the side of the road. The view from the top was magnificent. The journey up was not.
Flushed with the success of surviving the Stelvio, we headed for the Gavia Pass. On the descent, my companion — ignoring my earlier advice to carry spare parts — attempted to roll-start his engine while rolling downhill in first gear at 80 km/h.
I had told him this was a terrible idea. He disagreed.
The clutch disagreed with both of us by destroying itself completely. The Vespa was carried to a repair shop in the valley. It stayed there. We continued without it.
We reached Lake Garda. Beautiful, shimmering, perfect. My companion — now without his own scooter — rented an automatic 125cc. He had never ridden an automatic in his life.
Within 10 kilometres he nearly collected a cyclist and broke his knee.
What followed was a masterclass in emergency logistics that I had not signed up for. Hospital. Insurance paperwork. Organising transport for one injured friend and one broken Vespa back to Germany. All while standing at Lake Garda, which is, I must stress, a very beautiful place that I barely got to see.
I raced home with the remaining companion. He spent the entire journey telling me I was going too fast.
What is the Stilfser Joch? The Passo dello Stelvio — one of the highest paved mountain passes in the Alps at 2,758 metres. 48 hairpin bends on the north side. Magnificent on a well-tuned scooter. A nightmare on a badly adjusted Cosa 115 carrying 130 kg.
What happened to the abandoned Vespa? It was left at a repair shop in the Italian Alps after the clutch was destroyed on the Gavia Pass descent. Its owner had ignored my advice to carry spare parts.
Any advice for riding in the Alps? Carry spare parts. Get insurance. Make sure your scooter can climb a hill before you attempt to cross the highest road in the Alps. And choose your companions carefully.
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