The day I decided to look into that dark corner of the garage I had no idea what would happen. I knew there was an old motorbike there, forgotten for decades by the whole family and buried under a pile of junk. I knew that my father had used it in the early ‘seventies, I had seen photographs of him riding it with my mother. The bike had been given to him by his sister-in-law Enza’s father. When my father inherited it, it was already an ‘old bike’. He painted it twice with a brush, once orange and then black. He tried to modernize it to his liking, and rightly so, since it served him to win my mother’s heart. Once that was achieved the bike ended up buried in the garage and everyone forgot about it.
Then one bright day in 2013, I woke up and decided I would bring it back to life. My father tried to dissuade me for various valid reasons, but by then I had already started the journey in my head and my heart. I had to wait two years to get it road worthy, between finding a reliable mechanic and redoing paperwork, but I was never discouraged; in fact I can say everything went smoothly… considering that the average speed of my bike is 40 km/h.
I had made my decision: I wanted to go alone on a six-day trip on my 1949 Sertum 250 VL. When
