William A Gardner
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August
2001
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Via Della Morte
I expected a pleasant drive to Menaggio on Lake Como even with the border crossing. The road was narrow, two winding lanes along a steep rocky mountainside and through villages where old houses projected their chipped stone corners into the street. Between villages the locals drove very fast. When the first driver came at me with his wheels on the center line I gave him room and sweated as my outside wheels spun on loose gravel at the edge of the precipice. There was no guardrail. A few of these encounters later I realized it was a game of Italian chicken and started driving with my own wheels on the center line. At the last moment each driver would give way just enough to prevent a collision. Nobody slowed down. Halfway to Menaggio Jean was begging me to turn around and go back to Lugano but by then I was having too much fun. We nicknamed it the Via Della Morte. On the way back that evening there were people sitting by the road in lawn chairs. Further on, when we saw a ruined motorcycle with an ambulance picking up the injured driver, we understood then that crashes were a spectator sport.
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