Giant Test: health & saftey vs. snow vs. Morini Corsarino

Snowmagedon, they're saying on the radio. Yet this is our lane, just after I'd pushed the milkman's float straight. Yet the police are saying don't travel; health and safety. You'll die, or worse. Our eldest is trapped in Salisbury because a lorry's jacknifed, and every hill (not that we have big hills in Wiltshire) is blocked by another stuck lorry. Yet the snow is maybe six inches deep, and certainly no worse than our school bus slithered through when I was a kid. Guess the lorries are just bigger, which also explains the potholes (even if the HGV industry talks about the pressure per square inch being similar to a family car; scarily that means HGV owners don't understand hydraulics. Hmmm)

You have to wonder how old time racers would view this. Researching the idea that Enzo Ferrari ran a motorcycle race team (hmmm again) I've been ploughing through old interviews. Not a word about bikes, even though he talks at length about the great Tazio Nuvolari who drove for him and of course raced a Bianchi 350 (see Benzina #4); this was Enzo's view on the pressures to make racing safer in 1977:

"Nuvolari lived a life of passionate risk, yet died, humiliated, in hospital; humiliated because he was unable to die in a race."
Not sure I'd want to run that line past grieving parents, but those I have known all said the same thing, and taken comfort from it; "he died doing what he loved." I hope I never have to wrestle with such demons, and am not entirely disappointed our kids have no interest in motorcycling. But when our daughter was offered the chance to skydive we didn't dream of talking her out of it. If we make the old folks' home, all that will be left are memories. Riding a Morini Corsarini with knackered frame bearings in deep snow will be one of mine.