impossible.
Finally the rear bumper hit La Más
on the front tyre, cutting it and dam-
aging the Alpina tubeless rim. The
impact knocked La Más down and I
fell to the floor with her, lucky that the
left saddle bag protected my leg and I
was unharmed.
There I was on the ground, in a
state of "shock" because of the sur-
prising action of the truck driver from
Slovenia who felt the impact, stopped
and got out of the truck at the precise
moment when a young Italian guy
came running and asked me if I was
okay and asked me permission to turn
off the engine of the motorcycle.
I was lying on the ground, on my
side and I got up with the intention
of straightening La Más and evaluat-
ing the damage: damaged tyre, rim
hit, plastic cover on the front broken,
and also the right side cover. Giovan-
ni Scarabello, my guardian angel,
helped me to raise her. I had the inno-
cent idea that only the tyre had been
punctured, but the damage was much
greater, so we moved it towards a bet-
ter lit area in the parking lot where we
could see the damage more accurate-
ly. It was the evening already.
Conclusion: impossible to contin-
ue!
Giovanni was in charge for repri-
manding the driver, asking for his li-
cense and insurance papers. Without
even telling me anything, he started
filling out the forms and I, still not un-
derstanding how something like that
could have happened, and to top it off,
without it being my fault, sat on the
edge of the pavement and reflected.
Yes, I was driving very fast in the
rain.
Yes, I was a little fatigued.
I had driven more than seven hun-
dred and fifty kilometres practically in
the rain all the time while playing with
ascending and descending curves,
and in a section of the autostrada that
has poor visibility so I said to myself:
"This accident was FOR something.
TRAVERSE 39
To make me stop, because if not, may-
be I would not be sitting there looking
at how Giovanni was filling out the in-
surance papers and I was left without
a scratch."
When I finished signing the doc-
uments and did the sketch of how
the stupid accident left me floored,
Giovanni told me: "No problem, I have
my van here. I am a motorcycle racer
for the KTM team in Italy, and a biker.
Seeing you down, I instinctively had to
help you, so now we are going to load
the motorcycle in my van and we’ll go
to Padova to my parents' house.”
"We’ll sleep there and tomorrow
we’ll go to the BMW dealership with a
friend of mine to see if we can repair
the rim and the pieces that are broken
and that´s it ..."
I looked at him, he had a huge smile
on his face, and I told myself that it
was incredible that this guy had wit-
nessed the whole accident, that he
was a motorcycle racer and that he
had a van with the straps to load bikes,