The Dolomites

The Dolomites

In 1969 I was living in Rome, Italy and there were only a few things I was about. Everyone went to school so while I was a good student there was nothing very differentiating about that. I had a diplomatic card, but enough other kids had parents either at the embassies or the UN agencies, that that wasn’t so different. And about all that was good for was avoiding traffic tickets (despite parental censure towards that abuse) and parking up close at the airport. That left motorcycles, golf and skiing. At that time I was still riding a blue and white 50 cc Lambretta scooter, and while that was fine for getting around town, it was not exactly a strong image-builder. Golf was cool, but besides the limited number of foreign high school students who know or even care about golf you can count on one hand. The nearest golf club other than the highly exclusive Golf Club of Rome out on the Appian Way, was in a distant Apennine town called Fiuggi. Everyone knew the name because it was a big bottler of the local spring water, but it was a long trip and hard to get tee times. So there was skiing.

I had spent three winters in Maine skiing almost every day (at night on school nights and all day weekends) and honing my skiing skills to the point of being the proud owner of a pair of 215cm Kneissl While Star skis with a Look Nevada Toe and a Marker Rotomat heel bindings set at racing specs. You must understand that in those days it was thought that you needed as much steel edge on the snow as possible, so longer skis were the vogue. Safety bindings were also mostly steel as high-performance plastics were not yet perfected, so those big old steel clamps were the only way to keep someone my size on their slats. And man! Were those damn things heavy! Heavy skis and heavy bindings have left a nice notch in my right shoulder where the rested when I lugged them around.

We had a few school ski trips up to an area close yo Rome called Terminillo, just up above the town of Rieti, and that was great because everyone was impressed with the big man’s finesse on the slopes. But the slope quality and vertical drop wasn’t much for a real skier. The action was further north. In 1956, Italy hosted the VII Olympic Winter Games and hosted the; alpine skiing events at Cortina d’Ampezzo. The ski area is in the heart of the Dolomites, which are a small subset mountain range of what are known as the Southern Limestone Alps, where the Carbonite rock that so distinctively defines the jagged peaks where it can be found. There are twenty-two names peaks and thirty-five named passes in the Dolomites. That’s a lot for a small. compact range. In geological terms it’s a young range that hasn’t been worn down by time. It looks like these mountains were born yesterday.

I first saw the Dolomites in 1969. I woke up in a small Tyrollean gastoff and crawled out from under a billowy white eiderdown duvet to see the bluest mountain morning sky I had ever seen. It was Christmas break and I had traveled to San Martino de Castrozza with a Swedish family who lived in Rome and who’s son went to school with me. They had invited me to join their family for the ski holiday. While that sort of familial generosity is. It so unusual today on family ski trips, I suspect it was far less common then. My family was “loosely organized” with one sister away at college in the States, one sister traveling around as a rock band groupie and a mother in the teeth of the peak of her professional diplomatic career (father was MIA). Skipping town for Christmas with a casual and kind Swedish family that loved to ski was a good gig for someone who loved skiing.

The next time I saw the Dolomites up close was thirty years later in 1998. I had “invested” in a BMW Motorcycle dealership near JFK airport. I had required my passion for motorcycling. My skiing passion was being regularly satisfied by having a ski house in Utah, where I encouraged my kids to invite their friends to join us for our ski holidays (my way of paying back the universe). So I was into motorcycling and thinking if I should take a run at being a motorcycling entrepreneur. My partner (the grease-monkey) and I decided to go to the Intermot Show in Munich since it was where all the big BMW Motorcycle dealers from around the world gathered each year. That year, one of the perks was that BMW hired Eidelweiss Tours to take a group of dealers on a ride on new Beemers down into the Dolomites.

We rode down next to the Hitler Eagle’s Nest near Berchtesgaden, called Kehlsteinhaus. We headed over the famous Grossglockner Pass heading through Austria into northern Italy to the town of Marano. The next morning I saw that same deep blue Dolomite morning sky I remembered. The Eidelweiss guide asked who wanted to ride the passes that day and the other dealers passed, but we lit out as a group of three. We covered the thirteen biggest passes for approximately 260 switch-back turns in one day. What the Dolomites did in 1969 for my ski skills on my Kneissl White Stars, they were doing for my motorcycling skills in 1998 on my BMW R1100RT.

Another seventeen years then went by before I happened into the Dolomites again. This time it was a ride into Croatia that started in Venice, headed north into the Dolomites before angling East into Ljubljana, Slovenia. I was with my wife Kim and a group of my AFMC motorcycle group. It was just one day, and really just one lunch in a mountaintop, very Alpine-looking casual cafeteria with pieces of old motorcycles made into indoor and outdoor tables. It felt just right and what do you think the background looked like? That’s right, that blue sky was still there in all it’s glory. I’m sure they get overcast days in the Dolomites all the time, just not the three times I was there.

What made me think of the Dolomites today was that I decided to finally watch one of the movie screeners I’ve been sitting on. There was a Times article today about the SAG nominating committee screening process (Kim was on the SAG nom comm this year). The movie is Dolemite is My Name and it’s the latest Eddie Murphy movie. It has nothing to do with the Dolomites and there is no blue sky, but it was, surprisingly, a breath of fresh air (close enough). What I liked about it that ties together with my Dolomites is that it’s all about following your passions in life. Carpe Diem.