by Nina Galen
by Nina Galen
UP THE DOWN MOUNTAIN
I remember well my first encounter with an Alfa Romeo. Raised in warm, dry Los Angeles, I found myself skiing (floundering?) one day in Stowe, Vermont. There I met an Italian fashion photographer who, possibly to distract me from the aches and flakes, gallantly offered to let me drive his Alfa.
Having never driven a sports car before, it was a real thrill to feel its power and see how well it hugged the winding roads. Coming finally to a stop, I flashed Antonio a wide smile as I reached for the hand brake. We realized — at exactly the same moment — that the brake was already on.
Never will I forget the look on Antonio’s face, where horror and dismay struggled with the strong pragmatism of his virile Italian needs. Luckily good sense prevailed, and with a self-deprecating chuckle he wrote his brakes off.
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The author's Swiss chalet in Crans-sur-Sierre/Montana |
A couple of years later, summering at the Alpine resort of Crans-sur-Sierre/Montana while working on a novel, I realized that what I needed to get me up and down the mountain with dispatch was a small, powerful convertible. Recalling Antonio’s Alfa, I hied myself down to Lausanne and traded my 2CV Citroen in on an Alfa Giulietta, blue with white interior, sporting tax-free tourist plates.
The Alfa not only zipped swiftly up the hills, it fit in with the gorgeous cars belonging to Crans’ off-season jet set composed of Greek oil-tanker-tycoon heirs, and pretenders to various defunct thrones, with their American girlfriends on crutches following water skiing accidents.
Then one night the God of Alfas punished me for that hand-brake incident. Returning to my car from a local eatery, I found my hand brake cruelly twisted. Either someone had tried to steal the car and couldn’t release that stupidly-designed hand brake, or Antonio had tracked me down to revenge his unrequited investment in prosciutto, Chateauneuf du Pape and brake linings. My literary agent, when I wrote her of my slick blue purchase, wrote back: "Don’t dare drive your new sports car until you’ve finished your novel!" It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about my writing, if not about me and my Alfa.
Alas, while the Alfa was great going up the hills, it had a problem going down them. Every time I drove down the mountain, I had to have a whole new set of spark plugs installed. That happened three times, and then no more. Why? Your guess is surely better than mine.
GETTING TO KNOW YOU
To insure that I was driving the car correctly, I took a few lessons from the Lausanne Alfa guy. The two-lane Swiss highways we drove on were fun. They had hills and curves, and attracted an eclectic mix of fast cars and horse-drawn carts. I survived the lessons, but a short time later my instructor and another student bought the farm when they passed (almost) a horse pulling a hay cart on a hill. Alfalfa!
Traveling through Europe in the Alfa was different from traveling in my 2CV. The latter was so slow that lustige Germans on southern Autobahns would hand me strawberries and other goodies through the window as I tooled along. The faster Alfa, when simply left parked, would collect roses and love notes under its windshield wipers.
Another difference was when, driving my 2CV on the Autobahn and about to pass an even slower car, I would see flashing headlights warning me from a mile behind not to even think of moving into the fast lane. Whereas in the Alfa, the flasher would be me, coming up at 160 kph, frantically pushing the light switch in the middle of my steering wheel, and cursing in my highest German.
A few times this ex-southern-California gal took her Alfa floundering ... uh ... skiing. I recall once driving happily along a solid-ice Alpine road on a cliff high above a river with my four wheels tucked neatly into two ruts in the ice, pretending to be a train. Toot, toot. Even managed to pass a few shocked and indignant cars like I had used to do with the 2CV on this kind of road. When suddenly, there I was, facing back the way I’d come, the engine stalled. It had spun so fast I had no recollection of what had just happened.
"Alfa, Alfa," the cars I’d so recently passed were shouting derisively as they drove by.
Fuggum.
BUSTING ITALIAN CHOPS
The most impressive screw-up I had with my Italian car happened, fittingly, in Italy. It was a gorgeous winter day and I was driving with the top down and the heat on, as I had been wont to do in my Chevy convertible on the Pacific Coast Highway heading out toward Malibu at night. Unfamiliar with the road to Genoa, I thought I was coming to a level crossing with its barrier lowered. Slowing down, preparing to stop, I started overtaking a man on a motorcycle wearing a heavy leather jacket and pants, who was also slowing down.
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Nina in her lovely blue Giulietta |
Only it turned out that it wasn’t a road barrier up ahead. In fact, by the side of that very road was a sign the size of a large house with an arrow thirty feet long and the word GENOA in 10,000-point lettering, indicating that there the road turned 90 degrees left.
I hadn’t noticed the sign because I was being very careful squeezing up on the left side of the biker, who was hogging the center lane.
Even before it happened, I’d begun to grasp the situation. The guy on the motorcycle wasn’t slowing down; he was intending to turn left.
With incredible prescience, I saw clearly what was about to occur: Unaware that an American lady in an Alfa Romeo was passing him on his left, the biker would lean into his turn, lean onto my right fender which, by now, was moving at exactly the same speed as he. Leaning on my fender in his heavy leather suit, he would not even feel he was leaning on something. So, quite naturally, he’d be puzzled as to why his bike wasn’t turning.
So he’d turn his head, look down, and see (Aaaargh!) a blue metal fender!
Porca Madonna!
With a cry of horror, the biker wrenched his machine to the right and wobbled off. He stopped. I had already stopped. He turned. Feeling that the least I could do was stay there, humble and contrite, while he got a few things off his chest in Italian, I sat and listened to him curse me and my family back to the apes, then forward to the next ice age.
When he had run out of vitriol (a kind of oil used by the road-enraged), had vented his spleen, and stood straddling his bike drained and exhausted, I blew him a kiss, "Ciao." Then I hung a left and burned rubber in the direction of Genoa.
Copyright © 2000 by Nina Galen
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Nina Galen is a fiction writer,
satirist, airplane pilot, world traveler, and Alfa enthusiast. You’ve just read Part 1 in a three-part series of stories by and about Nina and her Alfa. Visit her web site at www.ninagalen.com for a look at her latest book. |
