Somewhere out there on the otherworldly Los Angeles freeways, maybe even at this very moment, steers a driver of uncommon skill.
She has gone to the driving stratosphere and returned. She has demonstrated a deftness and bravery exceeding that of mortals and most Americans. She has just spent the bygone fall and winter and spring navigating R-R-R-Rome.
It does wreak a shudder.
As the indispensable cog in a pioneering sports experiment -- her son's year in European professional basketball between high school and the NBA draft -- Alice Knox, Claremont High Class of '79, can give rare tutelage.
Day in, day out, she drove 19-year-old basketball prodigy Brandon Jennings to games and practices amid some of the world's most fearlessly insouciant drivers and absurdly concocted intersections.
"You just have to go with the flow, drive like them, and don't be scared," she wrote in an e-mail. Rush to any open spot. Flinch not at 90-100-mph fast lanes. "In the beginning I was very scared to drive, but I went for it, and now I can drive anywhere without the navigation system."
In returning to Los Angeles, she wrote, "I have to deprogram myself."
She spoke in May just after her son's last regular-season game and just before reaching for the keys again in the hallway of PalaLottomatica, the arena in southern Rome. She spoke after a season of stresses such as expatriate displacement and strains such as Jennings' unpredictable playing time. She spoke while standing next to a visibly exhilarated 185-centimeter (that's 6-feet-2) "G/P" -- guard/playmaker, in local parlance -- who'd weathered a grind and materialized in the top 10s of many of the too-numerous-to-count NBA mock drafts.
"I think this was the best decision I made so far in my life," said Jennings, who played at Compton Dominguez High and then Mouth of Wilson (Va.) Oak Hill Academy and was rated among the nation's top prep point guards a year ago. "Even though I'm not playing a lot and my numbers don't show that I'm doing a lot, I took on a challenge . . . and I did it."
He added, "The driving is crazy! They park their cars everywhere, and there's no lines in the streets. They're very impatient."
Pioneers do hit the first potholes, however esoteric the pioneering.
