Vespa In The World: A Farm, a Pig, and a Vespa: A Thanksgiving Tale

mercoledì 21 novembre 2012

A Farm, a Pig, and a Vespa: A Thanksgiving Tale

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One of the members of our Marketing team here at Piaggio Group, Communications Specialist Mike Fiduk, moonlights as a very enthusiastic Thanksgiving holiday supporter. As he told us ardently this morning:

"I'm a Thanksgiving fiend. I've got butter to melt, apples to core, turkey to brine, and potatoes to peel. So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I'll be leaving the office early to tend to my Thanksgiving addiction."

It should come as no surprise that, with such a crippling addiction, Mike can have nothing but the best for Thanksgiving, and so his turkey for the second year in a row is coming straight from a farm upstate, Violet Hill Farm. We first became familiar with Violet Hill a few years ago when we came across an article Bill Buford wrote for The New Yorker about acquiring a whole pig in his quest to become a Tuscan butcher. It's a great read, but this particular passage about picking up the pig from the Union Square Greenmarket is a delight for any Vespa rider:

"…When my wife and I appeared the following Saturday the pig was definitively dead, wrapped in a transparent plastic sheet and flopped across the back seat of [Violet Hill Farm's] vehicle: a medium-sized animal, about two hundred pounds, with everything on view—hooves, legs, piggy tail, snout—plus, stuffed in the cavity, the lungs, heart, and liver.

The challenge was getting it home. The transparent sheet insured that every passerby knew what I'd bought. It was not your normal parcel of urban shopping. It was not your normal Greenmarket purchase, either, and many people looked at me as though I were a bad man. One woman stood in front of me with her arms across her chest in open disapproval. I was tempted to prop our pig against the organic wheatgrass stand. ('Mind if we leave this here while we get a cup of coffee?')

Cars are not permitted in the Greenmarket, but I had a Vespa. Without it, I wonder what I would have done. Flagged a taxi? I strapped my purchase onto the rack over the front wheel, hooves dangling on either side, a pair of ears just underneath the handlebars, my wife on the back. The three of us, precariously poised, putted home."

Definitely one of the more unusual cargo loads for a Vespa, no?

Tell us below – what's the most bizarre item you've taken on your scooter? Are you transporting Thanksgiving goods via Vespa this year?

Snap some Thanksgiving photos and share them with us on Facebook or by tagging them with #VESPAVITA on Instagram or Twitter.

Check out the photos from Violet Hill Farm and enjoy the holiday!