Roller Derby

“Driving like that, how can they survive long enough to raise a family? you imagined the Germans and Swiss and Dutch visitors asking themselves, because, like so many Italian roads, the statale was a crazy Roller Derby of motorcycles cutting from lane to lane with the drivers leaning hard into the curves and the passengers holding on tight; BMWs, Porsches, Fiats, and Peugeots zipping along so fast you would have thought the ancient road were lined, or wide, or straight; cyclists in professional-looking shirts and shorts pumping the pedals in a bright yellow or blue line with a foot or so to spare between their knees and the buses big wheels.”

Simon & Schuster: The Italian Summer