A large displacement “thanks” goes out to Mark and Dave and the Good Day crew for helping us promote the 18th Annual Ride To Work Day. The video shows the anchors and producers clearly having fun at poor Mark’s expense. The initial concept of having the viewers at home sort of “ride along” with Mark as he made his way through town on a scooter seemed like a creative and fun way to promote the event. However, Skype did not live up to the hype, on this day. Instead, Murphy (and his laws) insisted on coming along for the ride.
Throughout the prep of Mark’s ride, we experienced technical difficulties. Though not with the scooter, mind you. We selected the SYM Citicom 3oo to be Mark’s beast of burden for this event. Not only was it nice to show off SYM newest and largest displacement scoot, but the Citicom comes equipped with a DC outlet to accommodate the average riders gadgets and gizmos. In order to make the Skype video phone connection possible, Mark needed to hook up his laptop to the bike while riding. No problem, right?
Wrong. Mark had a power inverter that we plugged in so that the computer, which required AC power, could operate. Apparently, the battery pack on the laptop did not work…at all. After taping down the inverter and plugging in his IPhone and laptop, we realized that the laptop was not getting any power. The phone was however. After a few minutes of troubleshooting to see if the problem was the computer’s power supply, the inverter or the bike (please not the bike), we realized that it was the inverter. But the phone works fine. Hmmm…is there an on/off switch on the inverter, perhaps? I don’t know. Let’s look. So we ripped off the tape to discover that indeed, I had inadvertently taped over the switch. Oops.
After turning on the inverter we were good to go. Except, not really. Everything was working properly and as soon as Mark turned the key to start up the bike, we lost power to the computer. I’m not sure if it’s a safety feature to prevent damage to anything plugged into the DC outlet upon electric start or what. So then we booted everything back up and thought we were good to hook. But, now the Skype connection wouldn’t pickup. Mark thought that no one was answering on the studio side, but the studio claimed they were ready and standing by. Who knows.
In the end, it was a good idea that just needs a few bugs worked out for next time. But we got the word out about the benefits of riding scooters and had a great time doing it. And that’s what really matters.
