I was in Italy with my ex-wife as she had invited me to accompany her on an all expenses paid holiday to show her appreciation for my having helped her revise her English translations for the past ten years.
We arrived at the coast and she suggested we rent a small boat and ride through the channels to get some sightseeing in.
Not an experienced skipper, I thought it most practical to stay behind a group of other boaters and follow along in their wake.
After a while on the water, we decided to go ashore and rent scooters and look for a quaint village where we could have lunch and spend the afternoon.
After a while, her scooter suddenly ran out of gas and I told her I would ride on until I found a petrol station, so I left her at a small cafe and went on my way.
I arrived at the next town, and as luck would have it, my scooter soon ran out of gas and I was forced to continue looking for a petrol station on foot.
By now, I had been walking for a long time and finally came to a more populated town and saw a music store so I decided to go in and see if I could get someone to give a fellow musician some assistance.
Just as I was about to walk into the music shop, a young blonde-haired man walked up to me and started talking to me in a threatening way.
I told him I didn’t speak Italian which only seemed to enrage him even more.
I was convinced he had me mistaken for someone else and he was surprised but agitated that I was speaking in perfect English.
Finally able to convince him that I wasn’t who he thought I was, he apologized for his aggression and asked me my name. When I told him it was Richard, he couldn’t believe the irony in that the guy he said I was the spitting image of was named Riccardo, though his real name was Boris.
Later, having found a petrol station and filling up a jerrycan with gas, I began walking back to my scooter.
After a while, I decided to take a rest and sat down on a stone bridge that overlooked an ancient Roman viaduct.
A young woman approached me asking if I could give her some water and laughed when I told her my jerrycan was filled with gasoline.
She asked me where I was from and why I was carrying the can so I told her about what had happened.
I told her I had no idea where I was and she told me I was in a small town near the village of Rio, and I said I never knew their was a Rio in Italy.
The young woman said she was from there and offered to show me around her town where we could stop by her house for water and where she said she would borrow her father’s van and drive me back to my scooter than to meet up with my ex-wife.
Then I woke up.
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