Light Textures Forms and George

I have a habit of over compensating my dog. She has been limping a bit and the vet has given her a course of pills, my wife has upped her dose of the anti-arthritis magic pill that I can't spell, but age wins in the end and we know where this will take us. So while I can and she can, we walk and these days she really really likes urban walks. I miss our romps in the mangroves but it's her time so she gets what she wants, in as large doses as I have time for, and a quick inspection of a surviving Captain Outrageous bicycle seemed to please her.

I was sorry to see the accessory coconut cup holder was reduced to transporting a crushed empty cigarette pack. I suppose the late Outrageous's philosophy was art for every day use there's nothing more everyday for an addict than a cigarette.

I got rained on Tuesday night on my way home from a short shift at work. I had stolen the wife's Vespa 150 and as I came into Big Coppitt the rain started. I took shelter at the Shell station parking the ET4 by the pump even though ironically I had just filled up at the Stock Island Chevron, and I watched the water pour down. The rain has been incessant this summer and last night was no exception. Clearly it wasn't going to stop so I wrapped myself in a waterproof jacket more to stay warm than dry and off we went into the dark sodden night, the Vespa and I. By the time I got home twenty minutes later I was soaked but, I had survived another night of wind rain and minor excitement on the highway. The sunshine that follows the storm is sweeter for out.

Walking Key West I see stuff that puzzles me sometimes but the bike lock cemented into the wall wasn't puzzling - it looked simple and smart. It's a bit like the new style hurricane shutters in the picture above reflecting the sunlight. I use traditional aluminum sheets at my house but I am intrigued by the translucent plastic ones. There's nothing like sitting in your house waiting for a hurricane with all light and all views shut off turtle style by sheets of industrial grade metal. While I'm on the subject of impossible dreams my home will never look spiffy and tidy like this. I am resigned:

It seems like it takes a huge amount of money or time to get things just so and my life is way too normal to expect things to be just so. I recently murdered my wife's indoor basil plant by misjudging it's water needs and her orchids I don't touch. I saw these plants tied to a tree and I wondered if orchids normally get this ...robust?

Some guest house operator on Fleming got the idea, where from I don't know as these things escape me, to put bright white stones in a tree pot. I found them intriguing. I've seen them before but today they looked bright and washed and new. I'd never think of such a thing.

The next thing we came t owas the art gallery that used to be a gay bookstore called Flaming Maggie's a reminder that the building is on Fleming and Margaret streets. It is something else now, thanks no doubt to an uncertain economy.

Now it's called Salt apparently an offshoot of a boutique magazine that was on display behind the firmly locked doors. salt: an indigenous journal | arts, literature & community. Like most things Key West it seems to come and go on a whim published at random. The woman behind it use do paint in Key West then she buggered off somewhere more interesting and apparently now is back selling stuff in jars.

Coming and going is fashionable now it seems:

A pop-up retail space is a venue that is temporary — the space could be a sample sale one day and host a private cocktail party the next evening. The trend involves “popping-up” one day, then disappearing anywhere from one day to several weeks later. These shops, while small and temporary, can build up interest by consumer exposure. Pop-up retail allows a company to create a unique environment that engages their customers, as well as generates a feeling of relevance and interactivity. They are often used by marketers for seasonal items such as Halloween costumes and decorations, Christmas gifts and Christmas trees, or fireworks.

There are different benefits to Popups, marketing, testing products, locations, or markets, and as a low cost way to start a business. Some are seasonal, others go on to sign long term leases, and some use it as creative engagement.

 

It's lucky they aren't actually selling "provisions" because most working people would go hungry if they did. The word provisions is one I've heard a lot when I was out sailing. For some reason people on boats talk about grocery shopping as "provisioning" as though buying food to go sailing were some 19th century expedition hunting salt pork and biscuits.

Which was when some bloke walked up to me addressing me by name. I think I did pretty well and made eye contact, sustained a conversation and remembered to take his picture. Take that Aspergers!

George has made a split life for himself in Key West and Prague of all places... Not exactly your Iowa cornfield! He was very nice about the blog and we chatted for a while about traveling, child raising (him, not me) Key West and eating out. I hope he calls but I'm never sure what people think and reading me creates one set of expectations which may not be met in real life. He closed with a comment about the night time black and white pictures I get to take on night shift. Something like this I guess!

There is color still in Key West of course, like this lobster claw.

I am reeling from all the colors textures, light and conversation on one short walk. And Cheyenne said nothing through all of it.

Key West on Dwellable

 

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My Favorite Ride

We have all had that experience where when we return after a long absence to scenes of our youth the place seems to have shrunk, and yet we know it is we who have grown not the places that have shrunk. So it is with a stretch of road that may be three miles long, possibly, and yet in my memory it was a proving ground that could never quite be dominated in its entirety.

Of course when I returned to this stretch of mountain roadway for the first time in 25 years, in 2007, it looked short and ugly and all torn up. I remember this place before the road was even paved and then when they put asphalt on it around 1973 it became a smooth black ribbon of perfect joy for a kid on a bicycle, or better yet a moped, and later a "proper" motorcycle. Nowadays it is frankly, horrible, as the pictures will show, all patches tar snakes humps and holes.

The signboard is accurate in its destinations but the distances shown from the top of the hill La Rocca to the various towns and villages. From this spot around 3,000 feet up I am not convinced Todi is but 13 miles away. When I used to come up here to get away there were no signs at all so I suppose one shouldn't be cavalier about progress.

There is also signage along the way now advising of twists and turns ahead (yes!) and falling rocks (no!). I remember a night trip I took with my mother in what must have bee the early 1960s. We used to take off from our winter home in England in the beginning of summer and my mother would drive or put the car on a train for part of the journey and we would arrive she and I and my two sisters twins and elder by ten years after a frazzling journey. This time in particular I recall driving this white graveled road very vividly for some reason, and I recall the banks of gravel, the overhanging bushes swinging in and out of sight as the car crunched down the hill in a cloud of white dust. In those days everything was covered in dust. And when, the next day I hauled my fat tired bicycle out of the cellar and got riding it was only a matter of time before my chubby young knees got stripped of skin by a mixture of white dust, pebbles and grit. I remember the sting and the dramatic rivulets of scarlet blood oozing through the white dust. I hated falling on the gravel but that never stopped me riding. In Italy I was free to wander as I never was in England. Much the way Key West children are free today.

This road then was where I learned to ride. I got my Vespa 50 when I was twelve and it wasn't long before I negotiated the gravel road to the top of the mountain. The fun really began when the road got paved. That was when I could carve corners as I liked, not following the dictates of the rocks ruts and piles of gravel.

This was not an era where young lads got rider training. Especially not for a 12 year old not yet legal on mopeds permitted for 14 year olds, who themselves were not required to seek a license to ride! So I got my practice by learning to shift the Vespa on the public piazza and when I figured I had it down I puttered off to see what I could see. Things were a little slack in those days and my mother loved motorcycles enough she learned not to worry about me. I went everywhere on that little orange Vespa. Once the gas cable broke and and a perfect stranger to me (he knew who I was!) stopped and got a piece of string and jury rigged loop from the carburetor that I could jiggle with my foot and thus get home... That was the world I was privileged to grow up in. That first fix-it taught me a lot about lateral thinking when I was off touring on a motorcycle.

So when the road was paved I read my motorcycle magazine religiously and learned from the aces how to corner, using pressure on the handlebars to counter steer and using my body to influence the bike in the turns. and this was where I did it, pretty much traffic free and undisturbed, least of all by the Carabinieri - the local cops based over the hill who almost never showed up in our neck of the woods.

Let's face it, it was a great piece of road to have to myself and I rode these curves most days for the sheer joy of it. Some days I set myself tests, trying to get from top to bottom with the engine off (what that did to the transmission was of no concern...) or trying speed trials without killing myself on my 40mph 50cc.

I cannot say I have ever seen deer around here and when I was a kid there were no wild boars. They were introduced later to give avid hunters something to chase but in any event there isn't much in the way of wildlife up here. Hitting a deer seems very unlikely.

The formative places and experiences of ourselves leave a mark that frequently we don't notice as we go forward through life. When I rode this highway early in September this year it occurred to me for the first time what a profound impact these curves have had on me. The thing I have noticed is that I have an unfortunate tendency to imagine that my experiences of almost complete freedom combined with the ypungster's innate desire to learn has been replicated in most other riders. In fact I find it hard to imagine how one comes to motorcycling later in life. There is so much to learn about riding and traffic is so intense these days and middle age is a time not for bungee jumping but reflection... And then I have to remind myself also that not everyone rides to live or lives to ride, for some it is just another experience. I tried sailing and I enjoyed the traveling and I also enjoyed the act of driving a boat under sail but somehow once I had learned how to operate sails I also discovered how travel by sail limits sightseeing with its emphasis on fixing things in exotic places and the inability of the sailor to leave his vessel unattended while he travels inland...Motorcycling also has a learning curve and is also useful for travel but it is also much less expensive than alternatives like car ownership, it is actually useful (you can't commute by boat most places) and makes mundane moments interesting. Then there is the fear factor and this eon is tough for me to come to grips with. The possibility of death dismemberment or paralysis is there, but I don't view the risk as being any more fearsome than any other risk in daily life. I nearly fell off my sailboat once in strong winds off the coast of Mexico. That disn't put me off sailing and the drumbeat of fear that sometimes is the only sound accompanying a motorcycle ride gets to be wearing for me. I find joy in riding not fear and riding this road reminded me where that joy was born. You can see my elbow in the picture below and clearly I was not wearing a jacket, though a helmet is required across Europe these days and I prefer to ride wearing gloves. It was as close as I could get to the good old days.

I learned to ride here as though on my own private stretch of track. If I fell down and hurt myself I picked myself up. I practiced taking dirt short cuts, I was fearless, as unfraid of mechanical failures as I was of falling off or getting run down. I came up here by myself when I could squeeze a couple of hundred lire coins out of my mother's purse to buy enough gas with two percent oil mixture to ride for a morning, or an afternoon all by myself practicing the tricks I'd read in Motociclismo. This picture below shows what we simply called Il Curvone -the Big Curve. It was a hairpin that was built quite wide open and always presented a speed challenge to a young racer. Before the road was paved mounds of gravel collected on the outside of the curve like a white parapet with deep wheel ruts circling like chariot marks in the white dust. After they paved it the challenge was to come down hill with the engine off without touching the brakes and without - falling!

I am a fool sometimes when I allow myself to forget, or fail to think about how other people come to motorcycling. It is hard to remember that 43 years ago when the world had half the population it has today and motorcycles were sophisticated if they had turn signals I was out here learning to ride, the hard way. In those days there was very in the way of communication so we read what publishersublished but we had no real communication with anyone outside our circle of living friends. Of all my friends and acquaintances only Giovanni caught the riding bug in similar fashion and we rode a lot together but of the outside world we knew very little. Nowadays the internet makes respiration and repair easy, locating cheap parts simple and allows exchange of odeas and stories with almost no effort at all. That's the good part. But the bad part is that the internet also manages to remove a certain element of adventure from the process. You can ask almost anything of anyone online and spare yourself from feeling like a pioneer. I know it is all helpful and I have availed myself of this process but sometimes I feel as though the pursuit of electronic knowledge - advice - tends to replace the pursuit of experience itself. Go out and do it is what I tell people who persist in asking my advice ( which they never follow) and when I was a youngster that was all there was. I went and did because no one told me not to. I rode across Europe on hopelessly unsuitable motorcycles, clip on handlebars, no spares to speak of, luggage cobbled together and paper maps scrumpled into tank bags. Nowadays people won't leave their driveways without spacecraft quality electronics, motorcycle built for the purpose and oddles of advice from unknown voices on the ether. In any event I hope everyone who wants to has a chance to ride or if not to ride to take a chance in some way that matters to them, Internet critics be damned.

Not everyone had that chance, in fact most people never did get a chance to ride when children, as most parents I instinctively loathe anything two wheeled and if powered by an engine even more so. Me? I grew up in my own world much of it less than desirable but some of it quite lovely.

So as we come to the bottom of the hill and Morruzze is erroneously posted as being just two thirds of a mile away, one kilometer and it is at least three times that, it may become apparent why my attitude to riding is sometimes different from many people who take up,riding later in life. I have never expected other road users to see me or notice me or pay any attention to me. I don't wearing clothing that is bright because I don't count on anything saving my life on the road other than my own wits. I wear black because I am lazy any black hides dirt. When you see me occasionally riding around town without a helmet you see a middle aged fool and I see what you see in these pictures, my childhood of freedom.

My childhood buddy Giovanni tells me I draw perfect lines when I ride a motorcycle, he calls me the Architect for that reason and it is quite a compliment coming from someone who rides faster than any other known amateur human being in the region. Yet my speeds are never particularly fast but I do enjoy tracing an accurate line through corners when I'm on a bike. It's the pleasure of the ride to me, not the speed, so my time spent on the mountain was well worth while. And believe me there were no brown tourist road signs indicating a "wine route" in those distant days! Perhaps it is better today I don't know.

So after all the riding it was time to get home, hair blown back, eyes streaming behind my glasses, none the wiser for my imaginary adventures in the hills, Snoopy style Red Baron motorcycle ace. The rest of the world was going about its business,,sowing and reaping what they had sown, my mother at home organizing the dinner menu with the cook...all the organized world that I escaped from on my motorbike.

So for me the last couple of miles back to the village are a ride down memory lane, the places where I rode taking shortcuts on dirt and I enjoyed having alternative routes. That's what I miss most about living in the Keys. I try to make up for the lack of choice buy changing my riding style, some days slow, some days not to slow, some days taking side roads, even if they don't actually lead anywhere, just for a change of scene. Coming back to my old riding grounds today I realize with fresh eyes how lucky I was to live in the midst of so many roads, trails, hills, and curves. And I was left alone to enjoy them.

I have always enjoyed reading about riding and I am currently enjoying Carl Stearns Clancy's epic First Ride Around the World annotated by Dr Greg Frazier: http://www.amazon.com/Motorcycle-Adventurer-Stearns-Motorcyclist-1912-1913/dp/1450221416 . Many years ago I remember reading about some guy in England who rode motorcycles in the middle of the twentieth century and he was no one famous and he certainly set no records. Yet he rode far and wide around England and wrote a charming little book that I managed to lose in the intervening decades. He did say one thing I remember well, discussing his journeys. He felt sorry he said for people who only get to ride in cities and never the larn the pleasure of the open road. At the time I had little understanding of his belief as I longed for a few bright lights and busy streets in my life. But now I do.

A fine medieval village in which to grow up. Not really, but as base from which to ride it is as good now as it ever was, once they finally paved the highways and byways!

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Election Results

The study to consider dredging went down by 73 to 26 percent in unofficial numbers reported by the Key West Citizen newspaper. I'm guessing, like a lot of skeptics, that won't be the end of the matter as Big Business and Big Money wants big cruise ships to visit Key West.

Mayor Cates beat Margaret Romero 54 to 45 percent ( in numbers rounded up more or less) and as that is her second showing she did quite well, whether on dissatisfaction with the somewhat autocratic mayor or satisfaction with Romero a well educated candidate with experience that could be helpful to a city facing the same economic future as everyone else Up North.

 

In the Utility board race the Mayor's wife got 33 percent of the vote but she will not face off against the bodybuilder and photographer who calls himself simply Vidal who got more than 30 percent of the vote. He will be in the runoff against top vote getter Tim Root who got 40%. That might be an interesting race on November 5th for a rather uninteresting job.

 

Jimmy weekly beat Tom Milone handily so the city commission stays as is. The turnout was 41% which is a lot for an off year election so kudos for that surely go to the dredging referendum. Now it has been handily defeated lets call it what it was: a study to study dredging to widen the channel.

 

Next the mayor comes back for another election to get Key West voting the same year as major elections and he may face more and stiffer competition.

 

 

 

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Thai Island

I am not at all sure I think too highly of the modern fad in favor of Thai food in the US. I am pretty sure I'm missing something but when someone suggests eating Thai I don't get all excited, and perhaps that's my shortsightedness, perhaps because there is only one flavor that springs to mind when Thailand is the destination: coconut milk.

Thai food is Pad Thai and coconut curry to most westerners. I am a westerner who has never been to Thailand even though I have been offered the use of a seafront condo in Thailand by one of my wife's numerous relatives. Why did I never go? I'm not sure, perhaps because I am not terribly interested in the Far East, and I am sorry if that sounds odd. There is so much world to see and I have interests elsewhere. Lack of time and money focus the mind, I find, which shortcoming irritates me even more when wealthy retirees take a part time job out of boredom. How one gets bored in this world I'm sure I don't know. Nevertheless I am not one to pass up a chance for interesting food in a lovely setting. Thai Island overlooks the waters of Garrison Bight, a harbor wedged between North Roosevelt Boulevard and the Island's north shore.

One can also drink at the bar and enjoy the view. It's been a muggy Fall in Key West so we elected to eat indoors.

The first course was soup, coconut flavored of course with tofu which was delicious and supposedly good for my persistent airline cold I picked up on my flight home from Rome. Alongside that we had chicken curry poppers of some sort. They were pretty good too with sweet vinegar and pickled vegetables.

Then we shared Pad Thai, which I am told means stir fried Thai rice noodles. It is they say a Thai aKe on what is essentially a Chinese dish and in Thailand it is sold by food stands on the streets not so much in restaurants. Except that Pad Thai is so closely associated with Thailand it has now been a requirement to offer it to visitors who have come to expect it! Ours was splendid, of course, American style.

They also offer sushi though connoisseurs say Ambrosia is best. My wife is threatening to take me there though I am no great fan of raw fish, not least because it is monstrously expensive. I eat out on the theory that if you are going to make me pay through the nose for food, the least you can do is cook it.

Eating out is a popular sport in Key West and this place is quite well patronized, as it should be with decent food at good prices. The nature of food in this intercontinental age is more multinational than we like to think. Fortune cookies aren't Chinese, burritos aren't Mexican, and pizza is more American than Italian most places round the globe. I asked a colleague about the Canadian chain Tim Horton's the other day as she is navigating a long range relationship with a Canadian man employed in the Alberta oil business. She wrinkled her nose and said its a mixture of Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds with weak coffee and a sandwich shop. The most important thing about it for Canadians is that it is Canadian. And why not? In a world of homogenization I suppose that's no bad thing, though I wonder what exactly constitutes Canadian food?

The entrance to Key West is in shambles these days, the Waffle House has closed as have all the restaurants and hotels all the way to The Inn, as the Spottswood empire renovates hotels that were to have been swept away to make room for a huge convention center that never came to pass. Dunkin Donuts recently reopened on the Boulevard after an absence of a couple of years. Talking to youngsters in Key West they will speak wistfully about familiar chains never seen down here, Olive Garden, Sonic Burgers, and so forth. Yet this town still manages to fly in the face of homogenization.

That the Thai Island eatery is located upstairs from a Yamaha outboard parts shop just adds to the charm. Or should.

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How To Speed In Italy

The Autovelox in Italy is universally despised, unless it happens to be placed, like the one shown below at the entrance to a village where thirty miles an hour may actually be suitable. The orange box in the picture is supposed to be equipped with cameras triggered by excessive speed. So when you see one of these you will apply your brakes fiercely, like you would if you saw a Key Deer, creating the likelihood that you might get rear ended by a distracted driver...but if you tip toe past the box you won't receive a monstrous sized ticket. They say.

In point of fact no one actually seems to know how these things work. Everything I've heard is rumor and supposition and indeed many of these machines don't actually have cameras inside, but as you can't tell from your car the best practice is to SLOW DOWN because no one seems to know how much the fine will be but it may start as high as 200 Euros ($270!) and no one actually knows what the tolerance is, perhaps five percent, perhaps ten percent. Perhaps not. And when you get the letter you are pretty much screwed, unless you are a doctor or politically connected or something.

You will be happy to know the Autovelox fines are supposed to be spent repairing and maintaining the roads, which might also come as a surprise as most Italian roads these days are in a pitiable state of disrepair, worse even than Pennsylvania roads. Thus the hatred of the Autovelox is directed at the fact that it is a tax machine not a safety machine. Some of them have been sprayed with paint which kills their effectiveness dead but of course you don't know it as you sail by at 49kph. Or whatever the speed limit is on that stretch of roadway.

And then there is Italian road design. The road shown below is a main country road, a Provincial Highway (SP- Strada Provinciale) and that means the occupants of this home have vehicles dashing by at all hours of the day and night. They at least have a low stone wall to protect them when they step out, but many homes are built right on the roadway and stepping out the front door is an exercise in derring-do. Yet this is not a country that believes much in active policing. In two weeks and two thousand miles of travel we saw maybe half a dozen police cars.

They prefer to rely on electronic boxes and that takes away the human observation element that I think is so critical in traffic patrol. Maybe I am excessively liberal in my view of speed limits but I don't think five or even ten over the limit necessarily constitutes dangerous dangerous driving. For instance, passing using proper signals, leaving enough space, wearing protective gear and not having a shitty attitude could all mitigate or worsen a ticket encounter. But an Autovelox has no judgment at all and imagine the line of sudden brake lights illuminating the expressway for this blue infernal box:

You have to wonder about the costs associated with driving in a country where unleaded gas, one grade only, costs around $10 a gallon, and most of that is taxes. Insurance and road taxes are not cheap, garage fees for those who live in the city cost money and the ever present problems of theft and vandalism make vehicle ownership somewhat daunting. Yet the roads and streets of the Italian peninsula tend to be clogged with people driving. I find it quite surprising.

Not all roads are busy and I was fortunate to grow up in an isolated area, miles from cinemas, newspapers and police patrols which helped me to practice my riding in peace. I never worried at all about breakdowns or flats, I just went off riding every minute I could get. It was a great place to learn to ride despite the loneliness of the life. And I learned on 50cc machines, then graduated to 350cc and then 650cc, including some off road riding and trail riding. I never dreamed I'd be back forty years later on a 170hp BMW K1200S. Decidedly not suitable for off road work! And quite honestly for the most part I find the national speed limit in Italy of 80 miles per hour quite adeuqate for my middle aged reflexes. Speeds higher than that require extreme attention and are quite exhausting as things move just too fast. It's at the slower speed that sometimes these electyronic boxes are irritating.

It made me smile this year when I arrived in Terni, the provincial capital where Giovanni lives and he fed me lunch and had the motorcycle ready for me, but I was too tired and I fell into a 20 hour coma and he had to go off by himself and hit the hills with his machine by himself. He, like me enjoys the solitude of the ride and the escape from phones and contact with the workaday world. We ride separately and the leader stops at a junction so we can each ride our own rides, no GPS no electrons. One of the great Italian road signs I wish we would adopt in the US is the yellow diamond inside a white border as seen below. It means the road you are on has priority at intersections. Simple and effective.

On freeways we did see a couple of flashing lights from the Polizia Stradale, light blue vehicles equivalent to the Highway Patrol puling over errant motorists, but even here on the toll autostrade there are electronic devices to take your money...Its a system called Safety Tutor and it sucks because it lacks any element of judgement. Again it is surrounded in mystery but the theory is that the Tutor system built-in to overhead signs as shown below measures average speeds between two installations, uually ten miles apart. The idea is if you go over the national 130kph (80mph) speed by an average of more than ten percent you get clocked. All of which seems quite generous as compared to the snail's pace speed limits across most of the much vaster fruited plain we live on...

However the Safety Tutor has a few quirks that Giovanni has experimented with and he has reached his own conclusions about this devilry. It used to be that we zipped onto the emergency shoulder to get around these things but as you can see below the wires now extend the full width of the freeway. Incidentally Giovanni wanted to talk (and smoke) so we stopped somewhat illegally in the emergency pull out bay. While he was lighting up and talking to his wife I walked back to the Tutor to take some pictures I knew I could use on this blog...which is how my brain works.

Giovanni has deliberately tested the system on his many freeway rides and he has come to a conclusion. He says when you pass under the Safety Tutor you should not exceed the limit at all. By doing that you don't trip the system and encourage it to actually go check for your average speed over distance. Also, if you don't exceed the limit at all you can't get a ticket directly for breaking the speed tolerance (whatever that may be!). At first I was leery of this theory trying to keep my average speed low but in the end we both ended up zipping between Safety Tutors and slowing as we passed under them. So far, so good. It takes an enormous amount of work to come close o keeping up with Giovanni on his six cylinder BMW.

I don't know that speeding is something everyone should indulge in but for me I'd rather drive fast and pay attention than drive slow and feel free to fiddle with my phone or make up or whatever else comes to mind. But there again I am no fan of high visibility clothing as "protection" either. My theory is that you have to look out for yourself, take responsibility for yourself and expect nothing from other road users, which is I suppose a rather conservative way of looking at driving. Taking responsibility for your own actions! Luck plays a part, good manners play a part and paying attention is huge. Also don't be in a hurry, for when you speed to "make up time" or to catch an appointment is when you go wrong. Speeding for the fun of flying when conditions warrant is a reminder that in the middle of civilization we can be a little bit beastly without hurting anyone except ourselves and our wallets. But that too can be too much freedom in a world corseted by fear of being different. I know I take a few days to adjust both when I go to Italy and when I come home. I am astonished when I am in Florida how angry people get when you pass them, instead of driving their own cages they speed up to cock block you in their huge lumbering trucks and I miss the accommodating Italians who expect a rider on a motorcycle to do the passing fast and safely and on their own terms. Then when I am in Italy I get tired of the pushing and shoving in lines and miss the orderliness of home. The grass is always greener!

The irony of this next photograph is that a few hours later we were once again pulled over in an emergency turn out. That time it was for a broken motorcycle, this time it was to have a smoke and a chat near Ferrara. Not actually in the historic and lovely ( I am told ) city...for we spent perhaps 45 minutes discussing family values and why child raising is so complicated as traffic flashed by, accelerating noisily as they passed the Safety Tutor.

Joe Cool gearing up for another stretch at a hundred and ten miles an hour. he has never fallen off a motorcycle in four decades. How he has managed I just don't know.

To get a real taste for Giovanni's Latin flair on a motorcycle you should ask my wife about the time she rode with him down the old Roman Road known as the Via Aurelia, riding between two opposing lanes of traffic sliding between two lines of cars in the turning lanes at 180kph. She was laughing the whole way, I fell back gritting my teeth wondering if I really was too young to die. Always ride your own ride and with Giovanni as your guide that means catching up at the next junction. Always.

Key West on Dwellable

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