8

The passos roll like a high stakes video game. Throttles, clutches, oncoming trucks, little insidious gravel piles. Fun, fear, guts, gravel, grattitude.

Back at Cavalese, the scene is set for a great star trek holo-deck adventure. I duck out the back of the hotel to a barely lit street, whose cobblestones have a dull sheen in the light rain. Walk up the hill, turn right at the laundry poles. Teeny balconies packed amid backyard gardens are vacant, but the locals have their windows open for cool air from the Dolomites. It's quiet in the gentle rain, and muffled musical notes are packed amid the fog. Up the hill, an unlighted and wet medieval stairway leads down from the street, hawked by a few wooden signs, one of which points with an arrow and reads Carpe Diem. I take the bait and make my way down. The steps, carved from native rock long ago, are sloped backwards and hold more water than they shed. I know that tune I think as I get closer. I peer in. The bar and its three barstools are unattended. I can't read anything on the signs except the times, and it seems to be between 1930 and 2230, when the bar is closed. Walking in means walking down in this subteranean club, which I do. Then in the main dining room, miracles have happened. A full sized band, with xylophones and vibes, has magically fit in to the tiny room. A small audience, made up of mostly the resturatunt staff, sits in rapt attention as the band plays. And I see why. The bandleader is Frank Zappa. Not even a mustachioed tribute bandleader, but the maestro himself. His sarcastic wit is parked for the moment, and he, along with Terry Bozzio and other virtuosos, are unhurriedly playing Peaches en Regalia.

Between songs, Zappa lights a smoke and I ever-so-quietly take a seat in the corner. I dare to look over at the next table--it's Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp going over the framework of a new song they'll premier here tonight. The sheet music says it's called Happy to be happy with what you have to be happy with. The page is black with annotation, and the time says it's in 11/8.

The band seems to be as much rehearshing as playing, though every tune, no matter how obscure, is played flawlessly. They discuss the countless time changes among themselves, then announce the next tune Apostrophe from a new album of the same name. I want to ask Zappa how on earth he comes up with these ideas, like stealing the margarine from a pancake house in the Arctic, but then I dare not move for fear of popping the magic bubble. Two scraggly guys wander in and sit next to Fripp. From the conversation, I realize they have sprung to life from the pages of Jack Kerouac's novel On the road. They dig the band, and Dean leans over and says to his travel companion "Sal, this is livin' man!"

In the morning I wake from this incredible dream. I did go there. The bar was actually closed, though I had Daved my way in to a glass of beer, meeting the owner in the kitchen, him thinking my name was Detroit. Was it those flaming shots of Absinthe those guys had made me drink?

Sean and Patrick punch out of Cavalese after breakfast, starting the long journey back to the U.K. Sean is tallking about chores he needs to do at home, though I am still in motorcyclists denial: The world is a big playground and money comes from ATM's.

I motor out of Cavalese and meander sort of Northwest-ish, proudly and stubbornly only using my hotel brochure map. The rules for the day are simple, if it says PASSO, that's good, and if it says OPEN, that's even better. In time I unashaedly pat myself on the back for so succintly finding my destination--Switzerland.

Grey clouds ahead lurk and gather over the pass, and my years as a pilot tell me I'm motoring in to rain. Reluctant to spend the night in a sleepy farm village, I motor on anyway, despite having left my rubberized ski pants in Italy. It gets eerily quiet in the helmet as the strong wind behind me is negated by the bike's slow forward speed. Night seems to be setting, and cars are coming the other way with wipers on. Crap. This air mass has been funneled in to the mountain pass right along with me, and now has no where else to go but up, where its moist air is cooled so fast that it precips back down on me as rain, then a downpour, and finally--hail.

There is no choice but to pull over on the barren road, where- at 2,200 meters, fate has placed a wood cabin for the forestry workers. The cabin is locked, but its door is sheltered by about a one meter square roof of corrugated fiberglass panel. A mountain biking couple already hunkered under the roof, soaked and dressed in coolmax and bike shorts. Amid the surreal picture of hailstones bouncing in slow motion off sheets of water, I strike up a conversation about suspension, the fully I just sold, the hardtail I just bought. The man checks the o.d. "Niniety kilimeters" he says. "And two thousand meters of climbing today" chimes in the woman. She, like the donut shop waitress in Wayne's World, instantly becomes my dream woman.

The storm tapers off as quickly as it came, and I motor for Zernez, a village in the valley just 7 km ahead. I am too soggy and cold to feel inhibited about languages, so I speak to the Swiss proprietors in German, and desptie accents and dialects, score a nice room right around my budget of 50 Euros. Showered and fed, I park at the bar where the teenaged staff gives me impromptu German lessons and practices their English.

By morning it's blue skies again. I gear up with a German couple who's heading home today. We know there are only a few passes left between us, the autobahn , and reality, but still take time to kick some tires, concluding that every biker needs three bikes: one for the autobahn, one for cross country, and one for the serpentines. We shake over a "Fehren Sie gut! (Have a good trip) and I'm on my way.

The trip home includes my first visit to Lichtenstein (don't blink, you might miss it) and motoring back unhurriedly through the vineyards of Friedrichshafen. I turn the bkie in , the o.d reading 1600 km for the week, and the owner charges me a whopping 10 Euro for extra mileage. I eye the other rental bikes on my way out, diggin' the sexy lines of the sport bikes, but remembering the arm-span radius of the serpentines, the too-tall gears and too-fast cams of ninja styled bikes, and step on the city bus with another million miles of memories.