A colleague once remarked 1 that the initiation of an independent research career may best be described as “the best and worst of times”, which is a sentiment I can wholeheartedly attest to. As a fledgling academic I was intrigued by the work of Schrock 2 on the then emerging chemistry of nucleophilic, Tebbe-type, carbene complexes and decided to utilize these intermediates in an approach to the molecule of the moment—taxol 3 —unfortunately none of this work ...