Leonardo Amar Dhyan Singh had a tyre puncture the other day. With help from big brother Luigi Hari Tehel and their cousin, Philippo Costanzo, and digging deep into their late grandfather, Dr. Luigi Costanzo’s tool chests, they managed to dismantle the complexly assembled multi-Shimano-geared rear tyre on their own.

The tyre repair shop is also a motorbike sales and service shop with a few shaft-driven my mouth salivating Moto-Guzzi bikes and also my favorite Ducati Monster and a few other lesser mortals among the machines on display. The mechanic asked the boys to pick the rear tyre at 8:00 PM sharp. We then headed to the Panorama shopping mall – the only one in the region. The two boys chose to football their time away while Maurizia went food shopping. I was at my phone camera best and of course particularly my two stinging in-swinging and our-swinging shots at the goal were classy coaxing compliments from the two young footballers in the field. Philippo saved both of them shots from ripping the net.

8:00 PM sharp I was at the shop but the mechanic had not spent a minute on the tyre yet. They had been busy with 125cc Vespa of a pretty handsome guy, all ornate with a gay-like aplomb. His milky-white still virgin as if a helmet hung from his well machined left forearm that had already sent my all-ceps hiding deep into my Kurta with only my 80s style cute little paunch (Heh Heh) braving-daring his presence at the shop. He surely was a cute little his-Vespa-smitten boy trapped in a man’s body.

Nevertheless, it gave me enough a chance to take a few shops of the tube changing process. The mechanic discovered only a single puncture caused by a rose thorn. That’s it! The tube is what he preferred to change for it cost 2 Euros less than what it’d take to repair it. After I paid him his 5, I picked the boys and Maurizia up from the mall and headed home, situated a mere 600 meters from the beach, where the boys fully fit the tyre.

The cycle was soon made roadworthy as I was a few photos and a story richer.