Prologue

It was a late-night television commercial that finally drove me to pursue a long-held dream of riding around Italy on a Vespa. Not one spruiking a CD of Dean Martin's Italian Love Songs for $19.95 plus postage and handling. Rather, it was a ninety-second spot for Tae Bo fitness tapes.

Tae Bo is a fitness regime developed by a bloke called Billy Blanks. It combines elements of Tae Kwon Do and kickboxing and is very popular with the kind of Hollywood celebrities who appeared briefly on Baywatch, usually as a person drowning. On this particular night Mr Blanks was spruiking his entire range of Tae Bo videotapes. There was Tae Bo Standard, featuring the above-mentioned celebrities in Lycra, and Tae Bo for Kids, featuring precocious children cutely punching and kicking.

Then there was Tae Bo Gold, featuring old people in nursing homes feebly throwing punches from their beds while nurses supported their backs, scattering the tubs of custard they'd been given for lunch. When the voice-over guy announced that Tae Bo Gold was for 'the over-forties' I sat up, scattering the crisps I'd been eating, pretty much in the manner of the old dears on the ad. I was only months away from entering Tae BoGold territory myself.

I hadn't been particularly worried about turning forty. In fact, I'd read a newspaper article only the week before that declared it the new thirty. I'd lived my life pretty much as I'd wanted to, working for myself and travelling the world. And with a few travel books under my belt, I had at least some achievements I could be proud of. But there were still things that I wanted to do, goals I'd set myself yet to be scored, and riding around Italy on a Vespa was one of them. The Tae Bo ad made me realise that if I wasn't careful my Italian Vespa fantasy would remain just that - a fantasy. A deeply cherished and richly embroidered one to be sure, but a fantasy nonetheless.

The idea to ride around Italy on a Vespa had first come to me as a teenager. It was a wet Sunday afternoon and I was watching TV. Weekend television in the seventies in Australia usually meant a Jerry Lewis movie or, if you were really unlucky, the twenty-fifth rerun of an Abbott and Costello flick. But that day some inspired soul at TCN 9 decided to show an old black and white Italian movie starring Sophia Loren.

To this day I can't recall which movie it was. I have zero recall of the plot and couldn't tell you for the life of me which other actors were in it. But I do remember with startling clarity that it involved Sophia riding a Vespa around the cobbled streets of a tiny Italian village, and that the grainy image stirred something in me. There, on the screen of our battered Grundig, I saw the epitome of style, sophistication and dropdead gorgeousness. I also realised with a Neanderthal teenage 'huh!' that Sophia Loren wasn't too bad, either.

I kept an eye out for Italian movies from that moment on. Whether it was a home-grown classic, such as La Dolce Vita, or one of the Hollywood variety, such as Roman Holiday, there seemed to be one incontrovertible truth: all a guy had to do to look cool was jump on a Vespa and buzz down to a café, a beach or glamorous nightclub. No matter the time of day or night, there would always be a clutch of beautiful women with large,dangerously pointy breasts waiting to flirt with him. And once he threw his leg over a Vespa, even with a three-day growth and crumpled suit he was nonchalant style personified. To a young guy still wearing flannelette shirts and ugh boots in the western suburbs of Sydney it was a heady revelation indeed.

So it became my dream to go to Italy and buy a Vespa - an older one, with saddle seats and a little too much chrome. I'd ride around the countryside drinking
espresso and flirting with women with curvaceous figures and dark, burning eyes. I'd the live la dolce vita, the sweet life, like Marcello Mastroianni, in a sharp suit and Ray Bans. And, naturally, I would look - and be - exceedingly cool.

It remained just a dream through my teens and my twenties, when getting a degree and a job became my main priority. And in my thirties, too, although the sight of Gwyneth Paltrow and Matt Damon on a Vespa in The Talented Mr Ripley did have me contemplating the idea of chucking it all in and running away to Italy for a couple of weeks. But it probably would have remained forever a dream, except for that late-night commercial for Tae Bo Gold.

Instead of ringing Mr Blanks and giving him my credit card details, I fired up my computer and went to the Google website. I typed in 'Buying a Vespa in Italy' and clicked on the Search button. Precisely 0.24 seconds later I had 1180 links to websites with information about buying a second-hand Vespa in Italy.

I could have gone to bed then, content that I had made such an impressive start on my quest. Let's face it, before the Internet came along it would have taken me months to gather even a fraction of that information. But I continued, fascinated, and to be honest a little scared of the bizarre world I had stumbled upon.

Dario in Bologna warned of unscrupulous folk passing off cheap Vietnamese copies - 'Charlies' he called them - as original Italian Vespas. Henrik Borjesan of the Netherlands warned potential buyers to be wary of rust and jumping gears. Elsewhere 'Scooter Trash' - hard-core enthusiasts who rode and repaired their own bikes - were having a good old moan about yuppies buying all the well-restored Vespas as retro accessories.

Then, just as I was about to give up and go to bed, I stumbled on a site for a Vespa workshop and museum near Pisa. There was an email contact for 'The Waspmaster' at the bottom of the page (vespa is the Italian word for wasp). I tapped off a quick email saying that I wanted to buy a Vespa and ride it around Italy, explaining that it had to be the same vintage as me and in approximately the same condition - a little rough around the edges but still going okay. I got a reply almost immediately. The Waspmaster didn't have a suitable bike in his workshop, but there was a 1961 Vespa on eBay Italy, the Italian version of the Internet auction site, that I might like.

'Just digit "vespa" in the search box,' he wrote. 'It's in Milan and it looks just right.'

My Vespa inquiry on eBay Italy resulted in fifty seven items, including an original headlight for a GS160, an oil-cap clip for a 1968 Rally, a chrome Vespa bird that the seller insisted would look lovely on the front wheel guard, and a set of 1950s postcards featuring pretty girls riding Vespas, which was fanned out in a most attractive manner. Each item had a short description and a picture.

The bike The Waspmaster had suggested was about halfway down the list. The picture was only a tiny thumbnail but I knew immediately that I had found the Vespa of my dreams. It was a pale coffee colour with two saddle seats and a fancy chrome crash bar that ran along both sides, protecting its voluptuous curves. There was a provocative flash of red on the front hubcap, but the bike wasn't shiny or sparkly. The owner had allowed it to age gracefully, keeping it clean and covered, rather than tarting it up with shallow cosmetic improvements like a spray job and a lick of tyre black. It looked dignified and elegant, a fine example of a Vespa that age.

I had never wanted something more in my life. I put in my top bid of €1260, printed off a picture of the bike, pinned it on my noticeboard and went to bed. Five days, six hours and twenty-three minutes later I was the proud owner of a 1961 125cc Vespa with saddle seats and a little too much chrome.

All I had to do was get to Milan and pick it up.