« Morini: January 2006 | Main | Morini: March 2006 »
February 22, 2006
Italy, 1989: Part Two
I picked up the cheapest ticket from SFO that I could find, one that required an overnight stay in Vancouver (which the airline paid for), a stop in Calgary, and a change of planes in Amsterdam. Finally, I arrived in Rome, where the first order of business was (after recovering from my first ever bout of jet lag) calling Maurizio and asking him to assemble a list of possible candidate motorcycles for me to purchase.
I got directions from Maurizio to take the train up there; "You can stop at either Bassano del Grappa or Castelfranco Veneto." I chose the latter because it seemed more convenient. At Termini I had no sooner completed the word Castelfranco then the clerk began to interrupt me with the choices. "Veneto. Castelfranco Veneto." From Rome to Padua the train is an express, or at least quite fast. At Padua, I changed to a local. This train was filled with schoolchildren, folks with shopping bags, and moved very slowly. It also passed through much more beautiful scenery. Maurizio picked me up at Castelfranco in the Fiorino. I threw my bags in the back and off we went to the restaurant. We probably stopped several places along the way and did errands. Somewhere around here I have journals that better recall exactly where we went.
Maurizio instructed me that an important local phrase was "Vai in mona." I asked if this was an Italian phrase or Veneto slang. He responded that it was originally Veneto slang, but that the rest of the country had adopted it. One of the first places we stopped (I believe it was the butcher, who has a fondness for prosecco) Maurizio kept asking me what phrase I had learned. Knowing that it was probably slang for "Go fuck yourself" or some such brute parole I finally turned to Maurizio and said "Vai in mona."
After dinner my first night at San Liberale, I helped clear the table and learned where the dishwasher was. I then asked if anyone would like a caffe. This felt perfectly natural to me since I had been working behind the counter of espresso joints in the Bay Area for years. It was this first night I learned that in Italy, cappuccini are a morning thing. Only Germans have them after dinner.
The next day, we drove around and looked at used motorcycles. I was astounded at the inventory in these places. Each place had dozens of Italian motorcycles. There were several Laverda triples, but they had been too modified for my taste. I thought that a more or less original bike would be less likely to have been abused. At one of the shops, we found a 1971 Laverda SF750, or as they are called in Italy sette-mezzo. It still had the original Laverda saddle bags, which were too small and too brittle to carry much. The price was L1.000.000, or roughly 750 American dollars. We trailered the bike back to San Liberale, and the next day I set about getting the battery charged, the oil changed, the tires inflated and so forth.
While in San Liberale, Maurizio and I arranged that I would return after my sister's wedding to help out at the Ducati rally he was hosting in April.
T. had called me at my sister's place in Rome, and I had called Maurizio and arranged to get us into the Morini factory. As it happened a friend of his from Israel was going to be picking up an 851 from the Ducati factory around the same time, so we would be able to visit both factories. I was amazed by this, since my friend L. had been turned away from the Ducati factory when he visited Italy. I rode the Laverda to Bologna, blowing fuses along the way until I replaced the last burned fuse with a L500 coin. Problem solved. I arrived at the hostel exhausted; in the morning, I would meet T. out front of Via F.lli Bordoni, 6/A.
A draftsman named Paolo guided us past the old race bikes and 500 Turbo prototype onto the factory floor. I have a few photos up here, and many more in albums.
[To be continued.]
Posted by Underblog at 7:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack