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If you are claustrophobic, scared of heights, suffer from bouts of road rage or fearful of head on collisions while reading a map in a foreign language and whipping around switch back roads, then Northern Italy by Rental Car may not be for you.

I have never in my life been so fearful in a vehicle. I couldn’t tell you how many times an oncoming tour bus nearly drove us of the road or how I hated to look out the window while driving up the Alps. It seems like guard rails are not really mandatory, but 10,000 feet is still a long… way… down. And of course Randy wasn’t exactly taking it slow and easy. Some people may find this fun – not me.

But for me, the scariest thing of all are the tunnels. You are literally going through the centre of a mountain – think about all that pressure and weight on top of you. The presence of emergency exits, fire extinguisher and SOS telephones doesn’t help relax me too much either.

I had heard a story from just a year earlier of a tunnel tragedy in Switzerland – two transports collided and everyone trapped by the accident were basically incinerated – the cars melted. This all went down just north of where we were driving. They’ve started to work on a solution to this problem though – a longer tunnel – but for a railway passage. So, I was slightly apprehensive when I saw our first long tunnel coming up on the map.

This next clip is taken in one such tunnel. Well, this one is on the side of a mountain, not directly under it – note the "windows" on the side. Wait a minute… an escape would be easy if a collapse should happen! You think I’m paranoid?

As you may have guessed, most of this interpretation is dramatized for comedic effect. The short ones are relatively safe. Enjoy the musical interlude.

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