Easy Rider

Last week marked a few firsts for Charles. After nearly a year in Roma, he rode on his first motorscooter and lived to tell about it.

Typically, after a night of work at the pub, Charles has a few options for getting home. The first option is to take a night bus to the main station in Roma and then take another night bus to the general vicinity of his neighborhood, these two buses plus a ten minute walk will get him home. In total, this option generally takes about an hour to an hour and a half. Sometimes less, it just depends on when the night buses show up but it's usually best to expect the worst when dealing with the night bus system. The second option is to walk home from the pub, it's about a 40 minute walk if you're hustling which isn't too bad but it's just no fun after standing on your feet at work all night. Also, in the muggy heat of Roma, by the time you get home after that 40 minute walk you're soaked in sweat. Lucky for Charles, a third option presented itself after work last week.

One of his coworkers has a motorscooter and offered him a ride home. The motorscooter is the preferred way to travel in the city center or Roma. They are crazy drivers and to most tourists it seems that there are no laws concerning them. In fact, in Naples, helmets are "optional". We've seen them drive down sidewalks, on the wrong side of the road, narrowly escape hitting other cars or motorscooters so we're a little bit frightened of riding on one to say the least. The ride home on the motorscooter took only 10 minutes and it was actually a lot of fun after the initial fright wore off. At 3 a.m. there isn't much traffic in Roma so that made Charles feel a lot better about it. Unfortunately, this option isn't available most of the time and he'll just have to continue to hoof it or to use the extremely unreliable night bus system to find his way home.