My childhood friend Giovanni rewards his petit bourgeois lifestyle, a fashion conscious existence predicated on name brands and premium labeled merchandise with frequent updates to his stable of vehicles. He is a BMW man, driving a large diesel powered sedan built by that company and riding an R1200RT, a touring motorcycle that gets rave reviews every time a magazine checks out the machine. All this means that when I show up to spend a few days riding with my buddy, the BMW dealer in Terni falls over backwards to find me a ride. And this is great country to be riding in.
I am rather less into labels than Giovanni, and less fashion conscious and generally rather less cool than I would have to be had i stayed in Italy. Therefore when we drop by the dealer to pick up my rental which is a favor to Giovanni, I get what I am given. Last year it was a single cylinder 650, this year it was a screaming 1200. "It goes from zero to 100 kilometres per hour (60mph) in about 2.4 seconds" Gianluca told me, rubbing his hands in glee. "You're going to enjoy this one," he said almost smacking his lips with envy. I wasn't the least bit sure. This seemed a little bit overpowered for a middle aged man like me.
163 horsepower is almost three times the power of my modest air cooled Bonneville twin at home, a motorcycle that will cruise happily at 80 miles per hour on the freeway and pull from 40 miles per hour in top gear, a motorcycle devoid of visible electronics. The BMW by contrast is a machine dedicated to being fast and smooth as only a wealthy mid life crisis machine can be.
Riding around town was a bit of trick what with the low handlebars which forced me into a hunched crouch, useful on the freeway but rather awkward to look over one's middle aged shoulder. I hunkered down behind the big hump of a tank and struggled to make sense of the famous clunky BMW gearbox. Once I got into second gear the street was mine- a quick twist of the gas and I was past any obstruction rolling along in front of me. this being Italy I was expected to flash past cars, squeeze through the narrowest of openings and pull past cars waiting at a light. the head of the line is the motorcycle's place in Italian traffic and the K1200R made short work of lines.
On the open road things worked a little better as the riding position eased the flow of wind and the handlebars gave me a firm grip to hang onto as the BMW accelerated like the hounds of hell were after us. It was astonishing.My second day in Terni I took off up the freeway to Deruta, a small town near the regional capital of Perugia where I had to order some pottery to be sent to my wife back home. She has become a fan of one particular family business in this town famous for its medieval pottery and I decided to get the stuff ordered first thing before time ran out. Giovanni was still at work so I loaded my back pack on the passenger seat under a luggage net I had thought to bring from Florida and it was me, a wallet full of Euros and the open road, baby!
After the pottery interlude I set off across open country towards the low lying hills west of Perugia and lo and behold I had my first problem! A yellow triangle lit up on the computerized dashboard. I slowed down and wondered what the hell it meant. Then "Low Fuel" appeared on the screen in English and a calculated 64 kilometers (43 miles) till empty. That pushed me to find a gas station immediately. At $9 a gallon (1.56 Euros a liter) Italian gas is about twice the cost of US gas and the tank swallowed a 20 Euro bill for 13 liters. The tank on this sport bike is no bigger than my Bonneville's despite its bulbous look.
It took me a few miles to get used to the immediate power response but I manged to ride through a couple of small towns without killing humans or cats and I started to feel I was getting the hang of the thing. The day was perfect, cool and crisp around 70 degrees (20C) with bright spring sunshine and big puffy clouds in the sky. Threats of rain seemed greatly exaggerated as I took corner after corner riding into the pine forests on Monte Peglia, on the road to the famous hill town of Orvieto some 40 miles away.
I found the BMW easy to ride on the open road, the position was perfect to control the beast on the turns, and when i caught up to the slow moving cages on the road it took but a second to evaluate the road and wind open the gas and flip past the offending obstruction. At home it happens that a slow moving car (any car when its a matter of the BMW!) appears as an obstruction, but in Italy motorcycles routinely ignore the lines in the road and car drivers often pull over to the shoulder to help faster moving motorbikes get ahead. Its very civilized though it can be nerve wracking splitting heavy traffic down the middle of those coming and those going. On Monte Peglia mid week slow vehicles were a pleasure to pass on the smoothly asphalted, winding mountain road:
The scenery was pleasant enough I had to keep stopping to pull out the camera and enjoy the simple fact of finding myself here with nothing to do but ride and admire my surroundings:
After the pottery interlude I set off across open country towards the low lying hills west of Perugia and lo and behold I had my first problem! A yellow triangle lit up on the computerized dashboard. I slowed down and wondered what the hell it meant. Then "Low Fuel" appeared on the screen in English and a calculated 64 kilometers (43 miles) till empty. That pushed me to find a gas station immediately. At $9 a gallon (1.56 Euros a liter) Italian gas is about twice the cost of US gas and the tank swallowed a 20 Euro bill for 13 liters. The tank on this sport bike is no bigger than my Bonneville's despite its bulbous look.It took me a few miles to get used to the immediate power response but I manged to ride through a couple of small towns without killing humans or cats and I started to feel I was getting the hang of the thing. The day was perfect, cool and crisp around 70 degrees (20C) with bright spring sunshine and big puffy clouds in the sky. Threats of rain seemed greatly exaggerated as I took corner after corner riding into the pine forests on Monte Peglia, on the road to the famous hill town of Orvieto some 40 miles away.I found the BMW easy to ride on the open road, the position was perfect to control the beast on the turns, and when i caught up to the slow moving cages on the road it took but a second to evaluate the road and wind open the gas and flip past the offending obstruction. At home it happens that a slow moving car (any car when its a matter of the BMW!) appears as an obstruction, but in Italy motorcycles routinely ignore the lines in the road and car drivers often pull over to the shoulder to help faster moving motorbikes get ahead. Its very civilized though it can be nerve wracking splitting heavy traffic down the middle of those coming and those going. On Monte Peglia mid week slow vehicles were a pleasure to pass on the smoothly asphalted, winding mountain road:The scenery was pleasant enough I had to keep stopping to pull out the camera and enjoy the simple fact of finding myself here with nothing to do but ride and admire my surroundings: I took a self portrait, made possible only because I could set the self timer to thirty seconds in the custom mode. I set the camera up, took off my gloves to make the job easier and after I pressed the shutter ran like hell back to the motorcycle and tried not to overshoot the blinking camera on my approach. It took a few goes and I think a couple of passing motorists thought I had lost my marbles. I liked the result.
Eventually I reached the top of the mountain, Monte Peglia, home to a whole nest of television antennas and other mysterious electronic stuff:
The other side of the hill is less populated and I had lots of open road to enjoy on my way down. Orvieto came into view across the valley, with its characteristic white and black striped cathedral set on the flat hilltop unusual among Umbrian hill towns:
I stopped short of the city and took a side road back towards my destination. It was another pastoral scene, green fields trees and narrow bridges over a winding brook.
I had trouble passing a couple of cars because the rearmost vehicle kept pulling over on the straights to block me passing. I think my horsepower went to my head and finally I brushed past after hanging back for a while and catching the asshole by surprise after he lost sight of me in his mirrors. He caught up with me again when I stopped for a picture underneath the Corbara Dam built when i was a very small child to dam the Tiber river for electricity generation.
The other side of the hill is less populated and I had lots of open road to enjoy on my way down. Orvieto came into view across the valley, with its characteristic white and black striped cathedral set on the flat hilltop unusual among Umbrian hill towns:I stopped short of the city and took a side road back towards my destination. It was another pastoral scene, green fields trees and narrow bridges over a winding brook.I had trouble passing a couple of cars because the rearmost vehicle kept pulling over on the straights to block me passing. I think my horsepower went to my head and finally I brushed past after hanging back for a while and catching the asshole by surprise after he lost sight of me in his mirrors. He caught up with me again when I stopped for a picture underneath the Corbara Dam built when i was a very small child to dam the Tiber river for electricity generation.I made it up to my sister's farmhouse for lunch. She had pasta, roast chicken ( from her own yard of course) and cherries in season off her trees:
We sat at her dining room table and reminisced about this and that and I looked out the window at the gathering rain clouds:
Her husband Vincenzo called it as a shitty year, though he used more colorful language to describe his disgust at the rainy June which was threatening his wheat and his hay:
For my sister Elizabeth who has raised two strapping boys on the farm, and whose English has become a slightly strained second language all the trials of farm life are all the world she needs. My escape across the ocean has always had a rather unreal air to it, for her:
After lunch I rode on another couple of miles to Elizabeth's twin Patricia who lives with her husband on a neighboring hill top. Before dinner we went for a ride as she still clings to the label of less conventional of the two:
For some reason I was reminded of my many escapades in these same mountains, decades ago before Umbria was discovered when my mother used to fulminate that we counted for less than Sicily or Sardinia (horros!) because our roads were paved last of all. Those were the days I rode Italy's answer to the Triumph Bonneville, a fearsome for those days, 50 horsepower Benelli Tornado, a machine that rattled and vibrated and tore apart wiring looms with deadly efficiency. But boy was it fast!
And as Sam Goldwyn was reputed to have said, "we have passed a lot of water since then." I like to think things are getting better in ways small enough to be almost unnoticed among the waves of ruinous economic and environmental predictions that swamp us daily. That small up beat note may be a benefit of visiting the past from time to time.
