Pliskovica Tour Teaser

...Just a fun, quick teaser which made me think about a potential edit of the footage from last Sunday's ride. Could be working on that very soon, we'll see...

The Longest Ride...

...to date. Yep. Last Sunday morning at 10am a much anticipated, well planned (were it not for the lunch break...) and wonderfully-blessed-by-a-perfect-weather bike trip rolled out. Destination: Slovenia, with its ups and downs and beautiful scenarios and peaceful roads (left aside a couple bitchy car drivers, as usual).

The best thing of this truly unforgettable tour is that finally we were a dozen riders. Not just three, or two as it often happens. Fixed gears, single speeds, racing bikes...It wasn't just hardcore fixies but that didn't matter at all. What mattered was that we succeeded in creating a group that was happy to ride roughly 80km enjoying the ride, having lots of fun and getting to know each other. It might not happen anymore, we might not be able to do a another tour with more than 5 riders all together but it did happen once! Which is proof of the possibility for it to happen again.

Yes we did loose a couple riders along the road. Some just couldn't make it all the way, some had to head back to Italy at a certain time of the day. Some had to stop for food, which as said above was perhaps the only negative note, if we can call it that way: It wasn't such a big deal in the end for most of us, especially the Prof who had eaten something like 5 energetic chocolate bars and could have, probably, pedaled for another 24 hours in a row illuminating the road at night with his own eyes... So when we did finally stop in an Osmica, craving for food was at a climax and we had to be careful not to mistake an arm for a slice of prosciutto...

I must thank every single one of them for this wonderful memory: A Sunday ride that will be remembered by the Matitesonfissà members. I'll end this one with a short video which epitomizes the whole mood of the trip: a doped Prof leading a pack of growling monsters.

Thanks guys. Way too much appreciated.

Matitesonfissà - Volume Two

I was having problems finding my video in youtube, it would never come up in the search results...But the prof explained me the importance of tags, and I was able to feel stupid about it and fix the problem...And now I can share it here too.

Bike stand on its way

So as usual I have breakfast in a bar right under my workplace. One morning, I discover that the guy who works there is good at doing objects in wood. He loves my bike and asks me if he can do a bike stand for me in wood. I say "SURE!" So now that I gave him all the necessary measures, I can't wait to see what it will look like...

Back from Silence

It's been a long hot summer and three months have passed now. Why haven't I written anything? It's very simple: 2 months of hectic work, 1 month of peaceful holiday and here we are. Back again.

The best way to begin September is with an old style ride and that's exactly what me, the Prof and Koper Toni did yesterday. A long climb (for the first time we climbed up Strada per Opicina, generally a favourite of ours to risk our lives at night with no lights and lots of speed...) from the sea level to the Karst hills some 400mt above. A ride to the nearest osmiza, a drink and a boiled egg and a rush back down on Strada del Friuli.

During my last week on holiday I even had the time to shoot a couple pictures of my bike in a cool scenario: an abandoned military base. Check these out.

Fixerati Antwerp

I recently flew to Antwerp and discovered Fixerati. Now I know what some of you are going to think: "hey, the guy's got money.." The guy has no money at all, the guy simply had the luck to travel in the name of the company he works for to attend an event in Antwerp and had a free morning last Saturday wondering around the city of diamonds. Well, Antwerp isn't just the city of diamonds of course. Without cheating and searching on wikipedia, I'll just tell you what I think about it: it's got some amazing historical buildings, especially around the "Cathedral of Our Lady" and if you ever go there I warmly recommend you pay a visit to the Kathedraal Café, loaded with hundreds of sacred wooden statues all around the place, and with a good selection of Belgian beers of course. It's got an awesome port on the river Scheldt, close to the sea, with some amazing old warehouses inside. It's got beautiful restaurants and cafès which really prove that Belgians have great taste for design and furniture. And it's got some great, great shops, like RA Destination Store and Your Concept Store where I met Ken.

Ken's a fixed gear pal who works there. Extremely friendly, very good in his work in my opinion and terribly helpful in directing me towards Fixerati during what were the last available couple hours before my train would leave from Antwerpen Centraal. I knew there was a fixed gear shop in Antwerp, I had seen it from the taxi window the last time I was in Antwerp, while heading to the airport. But I didn't manage to find it. Then I stumbled upon Your, stepped in and found a really great (now that I've read it all I can confirm...and I'll write about it soon here...) fixed gear book. I head to the counter and Ken sees me with the book in my hand and bursts out: "Oh, that's the best fixed gear book I've ever read! You know I had the chance to ride the Eddie Merckx bike that's featured inside? The one he did the record with in Mexico in the 70s?" and he flips through the pages and shows me.

I say the only thing I remember about Eddie Mercx, which is what Mr Giovanni Pelizzoli told me: "you know he was maniac about the saddle? He used to move it up and down all the time, always searching for the perfect position". Ken appreciates and we exchange a few words on the fixed gear scene in Antwerp. I actually tell him that the fixed gear club in Antwerp I had looked up in the internet has such a funny name, FIGA. I explain him that in Italian it's a slang for vagina and he can't believe, and understands why I would love to have a FIGA tshirt...

Then the question pops out: "Are there any interesting fixed gear shops in Antwerp?". Ken's eyes light up, "Oh, sure, you got to check this out, it's ten minutes away - everything's ten minutes away in Antwerp - and it's called Fixerati. It's not far from the Cathedral. When you go in tell Daan that Ken sends you". He gives me a map and marks the spot with a pen.

Fixerati's a really great shop for fixed gear aficionados, and it immediately clears out doubts about the fixed scene in Antwerp: there's people riding over here. When I enter the shop there's a young chap with a Cinelli MASH frame waiting for his turn together with several others who park their bikes outside and wait for Daan (if I'm not mistaken from what Ken told me, he's the owner).  I quickly present myself while Daan's busy with a client and tell him I've got a blog and would love to shoot a few pictures for a feature. He's glad and so I can wonder around taking pictures of everything.

There's a terribly beautiful Eddie Merckx orange and white frame mounted single speed, a super agressive Cinelli MASH frame on display, and a DODICI frame exactly like the one of my friend Lele (among other Dodici frames I saw in the shop), only this ones' light blue with yellow writings. What also strikes me are the FUJI frames in the shop. I had never seen them in person and they are really beautiful, if you like aluminum and carbon frames. There's a jaw-dropping black Colnago Pista mount and above it lots of aerospoke rims. There's some BROTHERS CYCLES frames on the wall too, and some gorgeous bike clothes. I had found a really beautiful shirt but wrong size. Damn.

A bit like Tokyo Fixed Gear in London (at least the old 14 Bike Co. shop I've been to), at the center of the shop there's an exposition block for a whole variety of parts going from hubs to tools, seat posts, lights, pedals, caps and more and at far left end Daan's put the "mechanics" section to fix and build bikes.

Didn't have the chance to speak with Daan since he was surrounded by clients. He only had the time to give me his business card since I told him I would have loved to send him the feature as soon as i published it. So Daan, here it is. You should be proud of your shop, it's really a cool place selling some cool stuff. Would have loved to ask you what you personally ride and where, but I'll leave that for the next time...

And thanks Ken: just like in the movies you gave me the right tip at the last available moment. I really had to rush to the station afterwards.

The Pelizzoli Tour

I'm sitting in my couch and I just can't take my eyes off of it. 4 days have passed and nothing has changed. My Pelizzoli frame hangs in the middle of my (small) living room and sends me powerful good vibes and visions of what I will be doing with it. Sometimes I stand up and take a close view to this tailored piece of handcrafted forged steel that fits my body like a glove. I caress it just as if it were a horse. I tell him we'll be riding long, winding roads together, I tell him that I'll be treating it as it deserves, that the pieces that will go on it will be worthy of its class and perfection. I desperately crave to jump on my new bicycle but I've made an oath not to pedal it until every single piece is here.

Going to Bergamo to collect the frame directly from the hands of the maker himself was perhaps one of the smartest moves I could do. I must thank Giacomo for this, I was a little doubtful about the long ride. I could have received the frame via courier for much less money that what we spent in this trip, but he told me right away "we got to meet this man and see the place". That was exactly what the little voice in my head was telling me since the first time I began looking in the web for infos about frame builders and stumbled upon Giovanni Pelizzoli interviews. I had to meet the man and see the place.

Nothing tells you you've reached the spot if you don't notice a  4 tandem bicycle lying outside the door together with a couple abandoned frames. It's a sort of warehouse with a red door. When you open it and your eyes adjust to the changement of light oh boy...oh, oh boy. It's time to smile with your eyes and feel that same funny feeling back then, when your dad would take you to the fun fair to shoot the gun and drive the  bumper cars. Your head says "I don't want to leave this place, at least until I've explored every single square meter and learned what every single one of these machines does. I want to learn, I want to work here."

Giovanni Pelizzoli is the kind of person that will make you feel at home after a few seconds. Even if you don't know him he'll be talking at you about anything in such a relaxed way that you' won't be able to avoid thinking that you met him the day before. He smiles at us, a quick shake of hands and he's already got a frame in his hands explaining who he made it for and why. Proud of his work (and who could move any objection to that...) and full of life. He's 70 years old, has defeated cancer and has the energy and the enthusiasm of a kid. When Giovanni leaves for a half an hour Alessandro, the young man behind the launch of the Pelizzoli website that opened the way to a whole new generation of clients as ourselves with fixed gear bikes, amuses us with stories of Giovanni, telling us how unpredictable he can be and how jealous he is of his frame building techniques to the point he quits working if you stare too much at him while he's welding. That's because he comes from a time when frame builders were few and each had their own secrets when building a frame. Preserving one's own technique meant the survival in the market and Giovanni continues with that mentality. Like a magician he won't tell you his tricks...

While Giovanni is away for a while Alessandro is extremely kind in offering himself with great kindness to the dozens of questions we throw at him. He clears out several doubts we had about frames and about bicycles and makes us feel at ease while behind us a very careful collaborator of Pelizzoli thoroughly examines for the last time my frame searching for imperfections in the paint.

Alessandro is also responsible for another wonderful reality here in Bergamo that some of you might already know about if you're into vintage bikes and professional renovation of old frames, not to talk about collectors items. In association with a friend of his they launched Eroica Cicli, a wonderful initiative that sells online beautiful vintage bicycles. I won't even go into details, I'll just tell you that we've been in their "headquarters" and it was like stepping into a secret vault where the treasures are...Luckily our pockets were almost empty because had we stepped inside loaded with money, one thing is sure: the money gone we would have left with all that money could buy...

Finally Giovanni returns and I have the chance to interview him. Something I had been thinking for quite some time. I had read so much about him but all the questions were always very dull and predictable. I knew the story about how he got into bikes at 14 years old, about his father, "Il Ciocc" and about Claudio Corti and Gianni Bugno...I wanted to know something about the man. So, inspired by legendary Bernard Pivot and his questionnaire created for Buillon de Culture and Apostrophe, here's my Pelizzoli interview, made while sitting face to face with Giovanni, surrounded by frames:

What is your favourite word?

GP: Love

What is your least favourite word?

GP: dishonest

What is your favourite colour?

GP: Silver

What is your least favourite colour?

GP: Purple

What profession other than yours would have liked to attempt?

GP: I would have to answer insulating, something I used to do as a kid before beginning to build frames. It really gave me that methodology and attention to details, and taking all measures and planning everything before getting started. Something that really turned out to be extremely useful when I switched to frame building. You would plan and sketch on paper first, then see your plan come to life and become something real. If I hadn't fallen in love with bicycles, I would have certainly continued in that business.

What profession would you never want to attempt?

GP: Working in a mine or in a foundry

What is your favorite curse word?

GP: Though it certainly is a curse word it's not that offensive. It's in dialect: "figù". Figù is a sort of funny but not offensive way of identifying a guy as some kind of a playboy, but we use it with people we know in a very friendly way. When I call someone at Columbus or Guerciotti I tell them "hi figù!". In the near future I would like to produce something and call it like that.

Who was the cyclist you had the chance to know personally that impressed you the most?

GP: I would have to answer Claudio Corti, who brought a bike of the brand I used to have at the time, Ciocc, to winning a world championship in Venezuela. But I have also a good relationship with Gianni Bugno for whom I made bikes too, as well as with the French cyclist Richard Virenque. I would drive him around with the Team Polti car and he would always tell me "give gas! go go go!" There's so many memories I have..Savoldelli who won the Giro d'Italia, Celestino...I could go on for quite a while. I have wonderful memories also of women cyclists like Fabiana Luperini who won 5 Giro d'Italia and 3 Tour de France or Alessandra Cappellotto who was the first woman to win a world championship in Italy with one of my bikes.

What opinion do you have about this explosion of the fixed gear bicycle culture?

GP: I feel that who builds these bikes today aren't real riders. They don't know what real cycling is. Going downhill without brakes to me is total recklessness. But from what I know it's something that non-professional riders do. The movement on the bike is so different...I call them reckless, though they are certainly quite skilled reckless guys (editor's note: he points at Alessandro). One of the problems I see is in the quality of the bikes. Outside Italy people into fixed gears pay great attention at the quality of the frame, the quality of the steel, if it's Columbus or something else, the components...in Italy it seems to me that everyone interested in a fixed gear bike wants to spend 500 euros and have a complete, good bike in their hands. That's impossible. And if you want to spend 500 euros and are happy to ride a frame that can be nothing but built with water pipes, well I think that's completely insane. In any case, it's a world apart because real cyclists don't go around with a fixed gear bike.

Therefore it's a legend or a myth the story about professional cyclists training in the first couple of months of the season with fixed gears?

GP: It used to be like that! Today there's this new figure, the personal trainer. I hope they won't get offended but to me they represent the death of the cyclist. The real champion, the real talent, knows how to listen to his own body. He understands where the limit is and acts just like a fruit plant, that gives fruit in the right season and takes a rest when it's the right time. A cyclist must have the time to recharge the batteries. When the season ends in September, he must rest at least until January before getting back on the bike. What I have just said is deemed like prehistoric by these so called personal trainers with their computers and their numbers. They think they know how to put a cyclist on a bike uniquely on the basis of what their computers tell them. I believe there are very few people in the world who know how to find the right position of a cyclist on a frame. It's not just numbers, those are necessary of course, it's a question of sensibility too, of watching the cyclist on the bike and understanding how he sits on the saddle and how he feels comfortable on it. Balancing a rider isn't a question of numbers, it's mainly a question of facts. In my opinion what these personal trainers do is simply squeeze cyclists like lemons until they are totally wasted. And then they throw them away.

The sound you love the most?

GP: The sound of silence.

The sound you hate the most?

GP: When there's a racket or chaos. Even though I'm a very loud and happy person I've begun to appreciate silence. I can't even go to the stadium anymore, or go where there's loads of people. I appreciate when I'm over here on my own welding frames, even though I love my collaborators, especially a guy called Alessandro (editor's note: he says that winking). I'm happy like that. I believe I'll die welding one day.

What turns you on?

GP: Other people's happiness

What turns you off?

GP: Lies

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

GP:  I'd like him to tell me "well done Ciocc, all of that bullshit you did had its own sense in the end"




Thank you Giovanni, thank you Alessandro. The best trips are those that end with the desire to go back. And we certainly will go back.

USEFUL LINKS:

Pelizzoli World
Via Enrico Fermi 24035 Curn (BG) Italy

Eroica Cicli
email: info@eroicacicli.com

Fixed Bergamo

Pelizzoli Step Two

What can I say except I'm excited? My frame's got a soul now.

Modern Times

Charlie Chaplin would have never imagined the future would turn out to be the present we have today. No doubt things have radically changed with the advent of the smartphone era. Everything's online, everything's live more than ever. Ready to be communicated and spread to every corner of the globe the minute it happens. If you want to, of course. Not always your decision, of course.

In our specific case what you do is you activate Messieur Le Web on your iphone, start your bike app et voilà, you can see where you've ridden the minute you stop riding: altitude, speed, km...everything's documented in detail. So tonight I can tell you that we've ridden at an average speed of 15,3km per hour, went up 238 mt, burned 457 calories, covered 17,9km and had again, needless to say, lots of fun. Fun when Guerrero climbed up the road like a bullet, fun when we rang Marietto's doorbell, fun when we ended up for a beer hoping for a pretty bartender who ended up to be - once again - a man (we always choose the wrong day...), fun - as usual - to just have the privilege of spending our free time on our saddles.

Colnago Build 25 February 2012

Giacomo brings back to life his Colnago frame, his first ever fixed if I'm not mistaken. Every sign of usage has a story to tell. We immediately went for a wonderful ride with the Prof the minute he finished building it.

Sunday 11 March 2012

God bless a sunny warm sunday and a whole day's ride stopping by in osmicas

Pelizzoli Track Frame is on its way...

...And finally, I can begin to get excited about it. Here's the first picture I received from the Pelizzoli team. They have just begun building my frame, here's the bottom bracket box. A true myth of Italian bicycle history, Giovanni Pelizzoli is an artisan master who produces real art pieces. He builds tailored frames welding them one piece at a time, day after day and never without his golden ray-bans. Follow the link above and discover his work. Me, in the meantime, I can't wait to discover the final result in my hands...

I Know this bike...

It feels great  when tou finish a hard day's work, get out and the first thing you see out of the office is a bike you made...

Cavalier Cravero - Bycicle Museum in Bra

It took me such a long time to write about this, probably because I wanted to pay homage as best as I could to this unique person, as unique as anybody who dedicates an entire life to one passion. His name is Luciano Cravero and he lives in Bra, Piemonte. Bra is right in the middle of places like Langhe, Barolo and Asti. When you're drinking or thinking of some of the best wines in the whole world, this is the land where they come from. The very same land producing one of the most extraordinary hazelnuts in the whole world. And we should perhaps also talk about the quality of the meat over here, and the cheeses. Put simply: if you're looking for gastronomic tourism in Italy almost any place is good but this is definitely one  to keep in serious consideration.

It is also a land of cyclists, no doubt. Endless roads winding up awesome hills in the midst of castles and vines, with the Alps in the far distance framing your landscape. Ups and downs to satisfy any kind of palate. You'll see people training all the time.
Class of '38, Luciano Cravero is from an era when as soon as you had the strength to help your family you would be sent to work. From an era when perhaps it was easier to cling to one passion and never let it go. And that's what happened to him apparently: his father bought him a ladies bike (men's bikes were too big for a kid) and he never stopped pedaling ever since. At 17 he bought his first racing bike,  at 18 he attempted professional cycling but finding a compromise between work and riding was impossible and Luciano remained an amateur, driven by his passion in a different direction. Instead of being with the riders, he followed them along the track. The Milano-Sanremo, Il Giro, the Tour de France...Mr Cravero devoured the races with his own eyes. Races of all sorts, from the most international and competitive ones to the local, amateur races. A spectator, he can satisfy another great passion in his life, photography.

Most importantly, he collects. He begins collecting posters, photos and shirts of all sorts. From the first Maglia Rosa of the Giro d'Itala to any kind of of amateurs or professional shirt he can put his hands on. Some of them are just amazing, like Marco Pantani's Maglia Rosa from the 1998 Giro d'Italia, or the Bianchi shirt worn by Fausto Coppi after the war. And flasks. Hundreds of water flasks, now accurately showcased in the Bicycle Museum he created in Bra, almost on his own. When the idea of a museum comes to his mind, Luciano faces it with the usual passion: he begins collection bikes from all eras, from the Bersaglieri military bike of the first world war to models with the first gear shift mechanisms, the penny farthy, a firemarshall bike from the beginning of the 20th century mounting a fire hose right in the middle, an old track bike, bakery bikes and butcher bikes. Even a salesman bikes from the twenties, when salesman would arrive with a luggage tied to their bicycle to sell their goods at the local markets.

If you want to visit the museum (kindly hosted by Mr Piumatti in a dedicated space inside his Bra Servizi), you will have to take an appointment. That's because Mr Cravero wants to be your guide. He wants to meet you, and he will take you through the museum and describe every single item he collected. He will tell you the story of each and every bike and how hard it was for some of these to find all of the pieces, how people and friends throughout the years have helped him enlarge his collection. He will show you every newspaper article he framed, tell you stories about professional riders from the past and about races he saw in ages when carbon, titanium or even aluminum were unknown to riders. 

You will feel the strength of his passion for bicycles in each and every step he takes with you. And when the visit is over, he will ask you to send him a postcard when you go back home. Possibly with a bicycle in the picture, to include it in his collection of bicycle-themed postcards. And that's what me and my girlfriend Alice did: we sent him a wonderful postcard from our hometown Trieste, with the local Tram ( a cable car that goes uphill a bit like those in San Francisco) riding uphill with a bike on its rack...

Museo della Bicicletta

Corso Monviso 25

Cav. Cravero: 3336567315

Bra Servizi: +39(0)172412507

14 February 2012

Simo Sa...

Radically opening with The Prof Descendance, Simon rides us home from the cold lands of the Rive, to the uphill road of Via Revoltella.

The f**king freezing cold is gone...hopefully

I know this argument is totally out of topic, but who cares, I decide! Just wanted to share with you a few pics from the ice ages that hit town especially last week. Wind blowing way over 120km/h, sometimes even 160km/h...sea water vaporising on the coastline and creating these really curious ice formations in the pictures below. My brother, the "weatherman" (he really is! and an amazing one too,not joking!) said we'll probably not see another event like this in our lifetime. So, here's a couple lifetime pictures.

Longboarding Monrupino

Cold January day for a longboard run but nice slope to try some speed

Greetings from Moso

We went on a ski weekend lately. Been two years since my last time on skis. And two years ago I hadn't skied for ten years...so you can imagine my performance. Not a complete novice, but anyway there's lots of training if one had the time to apply...

Sliding kiddo

Tabe, rip those extra wheels off...the kid's ready....