If you need two 6-meter pieces of rebar to build a freestanding arch in your garden for roses to climb, what do you do?
Well, if you live in Levanto, you go to Queirolo construction, the large local building materials supplier and local employer. I’ve gotten to know them well since we had some work done on our new house; hell, I’m practically family, since we bought the house from the owner’s father-in-law. Levanto is, after all, just a big village.
But what do you do if you have to transport 6-meter pieces of rebar and you don’t own a pickup?
Well, if you live in Levanto, everyone will tell you to use an Ape, the legendary three-wheeled truck produced by Piaggio which is of enormous popularity here. And if you don’t have an Ape? People will just tell you to ask your neighbor to give you a hand … after all, your neighbor inevitably has one.
As luck may have it, my new neighbors don’t own Apes, at least not if you don’t count the one that is currently being used as storage space by one neighbor for his olive nets, and so another solution had to be found.
It turns out that two bicycles, two parents, and two children in bike seats is all you really need to transport two pieces of 6-meter rebar the half-mile from Queirolo to your house.
