Right after Amerivespa Richmond I flew to Dublin in route to Belfast for Vespa World Days. Vespa World Days is the international Vespa event hosted by Vespa World Club and whatever the host club is that year. Its normally about 3000 scooters but some years it’s much more. This year was a normal year, despite being in a cold, rainy part of the world.
I had arrived by train from Dublin. My hotel was just a 10 min walk from the train station. When I booked my accommodation the host hotel the Titanic Hotel Belfast was not yet open. Which I was kind of bummed about. My hotel was only a mile walk to the host hotel. I arrived on Thursday in time for the Presidents Dinner.
I checked into my hotel. Then I started the walk to the Vespa Village. The Village was where everyone was to check in, Vendors were set up, and Food trucks, as well as a stage for entertainment. As I walked I saw many Vespas buzzing around Belfast so I knew I was going in the correct direction. All of the event was kind of centered around where the Titanic was built. I even saw a sign that said “She was unsinkable when she left” Some Irish humor no doubt. As I got closer I saw a big metal sign that said TITANIC. With what I came to find out was the Titanic museum. You might think, There’s a museum for that? Yep, it’s actually a really cool building. Inside I found the Vespa Club of Britain had a display of some of their more interesting bikes. I asked where the presidents dinner was as I was told I could not register. Registration was to be at 9am. It was 10. Apparently when you have your event on a shipyard slip it can get kind of windy and the registration booth had blown away. So I walked across the street to the host hotel. I met a lovely British couple and we had great conversation and drinks. The Registration was to open at 3pm. I went down to the village and the gates were still locked and there were about 100 bikes outside waiting to get in. The gates opened and every one flooded in.
Registration was set up to ride though, not
walk through and the mob was fierce. Even though I was only 5 people back it seemed like a hassle so I opted to come back the next day. All I really needed was the location of the Presidents dinner which I acquired.
The Presidents Dinner is as it sounds, all the Vespa Club country Presidents have a
dinner. It’s a great way to meet folks and trade patches and stickers and the like. It was an event I did not want to miss. Being a newcomer to the group it was interesting to see the formality of the event. There were maybe 30 countries represented at the dinner and 54 countries overall represented at the event.
The next day we were to have what was supposed to be a 1 hour meeting. I arrive at the meeting, its setup in a standard presentation format. The meeting should be about electing new representative to the board and a couple of presentation of upcoming VWD.
So it was interesting is that we were to vote on who would be on the board but were given no options. Basically this voting that happens only every 3 years is kind of rigged. I say “kind of”, as if, I for example wanted a seat on the board I would have had to make my desire known two months prior. No one had in advance thrown their name in the hat. So all the existing members just needed to be ratified if you will. That was fine until the President of the Vespa Club Italy decided he wanted to be on the board. Which is reasonable since the Vespa Club Italy is the largest club with something like 3000 members. I save you the details but we had to vote on how we would vote. This one hour meeting turned into a 4 hour meeting. I will say I learned a lot about how Piaggio and the Vespa World Club work together.
