As you can see from that incredible Bimota on the cover, I spent some time in Italy this summer. Actually, truth be told, I spend some time every summer in Italy and it’s specifically because of the motorcycling. As in, after 42 years of testing bikes around the world, I have found no better place in the world to tour, commute and, yes, grind footpegs than the land of La Dolce Vita. Here are just some of the reasons why:

1. Imagine the ease of renting a car with the availability of some truly exotic machinery paired with enthusiast entrepreneurship. That’s what renting a bike in Italy from Hertz Rent-a-Ride is like. Go online to hertzride.com and you can book pretty much any bike you like. Certainly, any BMW you like, from mighty R1300 GS to lowly — as in a low, low seat height — F750 GS. Need insurance? Can do. Riding gear? They’ve got boots, gloves and helmets. Hell, you can even get them with an intercom system. They’ll even throw in a holder for your iPhone. Seriously, it’s easier and more convenient than renting a Toyota at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. You can’t rent a Ferrari at Pearson, but you can get an MV Agusta Turismo Veloce from Hertz Rent-a-Ride in Milan.

2. Italians driving like maniacs is no mere stereotype — it’s a way of life. And you don’t need a supercar. Indeed, this year’s Mario Androgenous Driving award goes to some loon chasing me down the Forcola Pass in a 15-year-old Fiat Panda. Now a 60-hp Fiat up a mountain pass is a very sad thing indeed. But down? Well, in the right hands — i.e. the reflexes of Max Verstappen with a Magellan-like memorization of hairpin curves — it can pass many a superbike. 

But, despite this apparent craziness, the fatality rate for motorcyclists in Italy is far less than that for North American bikers. In America, the land of 60-mph speed limits and oh-so-
vigilante policing, motorcyclists suffer almost five times as many deaths per 100,000 registrations than bikers in Italy. Credit better motorcycle training if you want. Perhaps motorcyclists in Italy take their craft more seriously. But understand that pretty much every Italian behind the wheel of a car has, at one point in time, ridden a bike, a scooter or even a moped, so is therefore very aware of your presence.

3. The above is made all the more amazing by the insanely high-speed “filtering” common to Italy. Ride pretty much any two-lane highway in Northern Italy and, if you should come up on a line of slower moving traffic, virtually everyone will pull onto the shoulder so you don’t have to wait for an opening in opposing traffic to pass. Half the time, the opposing traffic will pull to their right to give you even more room. It’s like some invisible Moses is parting the seas that you might be rid of these troublesome Pharoahs … I mean, cars.

4. Standalone Dainese stores are surprisingly common. Within 60 kilometres of my base of Bormio — which, rests at the very foot of the world famous Stelvio Pass — there are two such stores. Thirty kilometres over the aforementioned Forcola Pass in Livigno and another 60 kilometres distant in the other direction in Sondrio. Now, here’s the thing. Barely 6,000 people live in Livigno, by the way, and just 52,000 in Sondrio. I’ll remind you that there are no Dainese-only boutiques in Canada. 

5. That is not, however, my favourite indicator of how ingrained motorcycling is into Italian culture. For that, we have to turn to cows. Cows, you ask? Yes, cows I say. Italian cows, you see, are different. Oh, they look pretty much the same and, indeed, serve pretty much the same purpose — which is to say: meat and milk with a side order of Dainese leather. But after that, they’re completely different to Canadian Daisys. 

For one thing, they can climb like Billy goats up all those mountain passes bikers like to strafe. For another, they’re so used to Akropovic’ed S1000RRs jetting by at 10,000 rpm that they barely bat an eye. In fact, so blasé are these bovines about the speed of the motorcycles rushing by that they will eat grass right up to the edge of the road. Any road. 

Where this gets interesting is when they do so at the apex of tournantes. Yes, that means if you’re rifling through such a switchback, you can get mighty close to Old Bessie. How close, you ask? Well, have you ever seen those pictures of Irish road racers getting so close to the walls inside the Northwest 200’s many corners that they have to lift their head lest they conk their noggin? I have been that close to a meeting of minds with Bos taurus. 

Interestingly, sheep in the same circumstance have the good sense to scatter. But cows? Not so much. In short, in Italy, you might well find yourself scraping footpeg on a sweeping switchback with a cow as an apex marker. That, I’m pretty sure, sums up the vast gulf between motorcycling in Canada and the land of a thousand mountain passes.