Crazy but not stupid

The one precaution we took was for Elvio to park the motorcycle down the road by the church when he came to pick me up. We may have been born yesterday, but not the day before yesterday. We could safely hypothesize (see? safety wasn't the absolute furthest thing from our minds) that for him to come roaring into the courtyard of our building on that thing would be unpopular with my parents.

They weren't microparenting enough to notice that on some dates we strolled out of the courtyard on foot instead of puttering out in the little Fiat. My parents had way too many kids, most of whom were misbehaving horridly, to focus in on any of my innocuous details. They were much too other-preoccupied to wonder, Hm, where's Elvio's car? Why would he choose to park out on the street where it's impossible to find a spot when he can be guaranteed a spot in the courtyard?

I'm lucky that since we usually went out in groups, the motorcycle wasn't the default mode of transportation. I'm lucky that he probably shared that thing with his two brothers, so it wasn't available as much as it could have been. I'm lucky that when we went up to the mountains to go skiing, the vehicle of choice was the Fiat.

Up in the mountains, quite another kind of safety challenge was underway. While far away in another hemisphere tourists were flocking to Acapulco to witness the famed cliff diving, Italians were engaged in an even more extreme sport, known only to themselves and the occasional scared witless American.

Come with me to the cliffside roads of Italy and experience the chilling wonders of Italian cliff driving.