TIME TRAVEL?
Sep 15 '08
The Bottom Line Visit Gubbio. It's a trip!
For the past decade, business travel overseas with free time on weekends has allowed me to rent motorcycles for occasional unstructured, solo mini-tours of Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Vestiges of High School French and Gasthaus German always enabled me to find food, fuel and accommodations on the fly – but based on other experiences traveling in Europe with my wife, Pat, I knew that if she were to accompany me on a two-wheeled trip a good deal more structure – i.e., guaranteed suitable accommodations at the end of every day – would be a necessity!
After much discussion and research, we finally signed up for a guided motorcycle tour of Umbria – Gubbio, Orvieto, and Assisi – in June, with a German tour group that featured the kind of high technology BMW motorcycles that we were accustomed to riding at home. We used frequent flyer miles for our plane tickets and a night at a Marriott in Munich on the eve of our first shared motorcycle adventure in Europe – during which we would celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary!
On the appointed evening we met out tour guide, Manfred, and fellow motorcyclists at the BMW factory complex in Munich. We changed into leathers, packed the saddlebags of our assigned mount, and took off in close formation for the rail yard where, along with dozens of other riders, we loaded our bike on the overnight AutoZug train to the Adriatic coast of Italy – Rimini.
The theory was, we would sleep in a private compartment for two while the train traveled through the night, arriving at our destination at about 0700 the next morning. The challenge? We had unexpectedly been downgraded to a second class sleeper which, combining ironing-board like bunk beds with our mutual adrenaline high of excitement and anticipation, resulted in a relatively sleepless night for both of us as the train clattered through the Alps and Northern Italy.
Nonetheless, we were bright-eyed and full of caffeine as we unloaded the BMWs in the Italian rail yard under a gray and foreboding morning sky, mounted up, and began the first leg of our weeklong tour of Umbria.
The day was an eventful one. Anyone who has driven a car in Italy knows that the pace of traffic is rapid and drivers are expected to be aggressive – and skillful. Anyone who has ridden a motorcycle anywhere knows that perceptions and sensations – sights, sounds, speeds – are magnified. Pat, sleep-deprived and accustomed to the more sedate tempo of motorcycle cruising on back country roads in America, was shocked at the intensity of the pace set by the group leader as our formation rapidly knifed our way through downtown traffic and out into the countryside.
Once outside of town we established the rhythm that became characteristic of the entire week: sustained high speeds, rapid acceleration and deceleration, and tight cornering around 180 degree switchbacks while climbing and descending the Apennines. By the time we stopped for lunch at a roadside trattoria, Pat was in a state of sensory and emotional overload. We’d navigated more tight turns with sharp lean angles in a half day in Italy than in years of touring in the U.S.
Sensing our fatigue, Manfred wisely suggested that the group stop and nap in a grassy meadow high in the mountains. We finally got our first hour of comfortable sleep since leaving Munich the previous night.
Awakening in mid-afternoon to increasingly cloudy skies, we mounted up for our last hour of riding, back through the mountains to Gubbio, our first day’s destination and, in the 15th Century, home to my namesake, Federico, Duke of Urbino – called by some “the ultimate model of a Renaissance man”. At first, we continued to work our way towards the historic city – also known to both Saint Francis of Assisi and Leonardo da Vinci – on steep and twisting two lane blacktop roads. But as increasingly heavy rain began to fall, we stopped to don our rain gear, remounted, and entered the Autostrada for a high speed run to the town.
Although our full-face helmets and rainsuits kept us dry, the rain increased in intensity and pelted our facemasks. The bikes threw up plumes of spray in giant rooster tails as we raced to our destination. Finally we could see a tunnel up ahead – a momentary respite from the rain.
The tunnel was long and dark, but compared to the road we had just left, strangely quiet. We could hear the drone of the engines as we bored through the mountain. As we approached the end of the tunnel we could see that the sky outside had darkened – and the intensity of the rain had increased – substantially.
In an instant we emerged from the relative serenity of the tunnel into a furious tempest! A maelstrom of wind and hail and thunder and lightning and nearly solid sheets of rain met us with unexpected force. We fought to sustain balance, direction, and formation – buffeted by gusts of wind and rain and the deafening rattle of hailstones on our helmets at 60 miles an hour.
Challenging the elements on our high tech mounts, we neared our destination. As we finally approached the walls of the ancient city, the storm abated. Our ears still rang from the cacophony. In gathering dusk we slowly motored through seemingly deserted silent, narrow cobblestone streets to the restored palazzo that was our destination.
We came to a halt before a massive gate. No sign of the twentieth century – other than ourselves and our mounts – was evident in the empty street; little more than an alleyway. No people, no cars, no signs, no electric lights. The storm had caused a power failure and emptied the streets.
Or had the mystical, technological, and historic influence of Francis, Leonardo, and Federico converged with the ferocious natural energy of the storm to transport us back to the 15th Century?
We slept well that night, and every night thereafter.
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frebo3
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Location: Texas, USA
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Socialism is the opiate of the intelligentsia
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