Lombardy, the industrial engine of Italy and the beating heart of the country’s rich cycling culture. Home to hundreds of cycling clubs and tens of thousands of competitive cyclists, racing from one end of the year to the other, through the little towns and villages that have given the Italians many of their greatest heroes: from Alfredo Binda and Felice Gimondi to Roberto Visentini, Gianni Bugno, and Ivan Basso.
I’m constantly seeing these photographs on the instagrams of people out with their large groups of beautiful friends riding their bikes. On a weekday, one like any other. These people are not on vacation, but they’re not unemployed, either. They somehow find time to do this, in the middle of their successful, joy-filled lives. And me? I’m stuck at my computer, dreaming about bicycles. Whenever I see a post like that, the same thoughts race through my mind every time: Who are these people? When do they do their laundry? Walk their dogs? And how in the world do they pay the bills and keep their spouses happy? Read More
Two years ago, Mark Bianchi walked into Bicycle Haus, a boutique bike shop in Scottsdale, Arizona, and started buying bikes and cycling paraphernalia. Lots of it.
It’s an inconvenience that every serious cyclist has encountered at one time or another. Your bike needs a service, but you need to work or take care of family commitments. Which means it goes to the bottom of your ‘to-do’ list, and your riding suffers. But it doesn’t have to. Velofix offers an alternative, a modern answer to an old cycling problem. Simply book a service online, and the certified mechanic will come to you – bringing a first-class workshop along with him.
With a combined 50,000 miles of travel between us at the dinner table our patron host Eros Poli announces “Just one rule this week: ‘If you drop, you die!'”
A nervous chortle is coughed up from a few in the group, then attention is drawn to my t-shirt which has the same quote emblazoned with appropriate citation by none other than Eros Poli. The previously high strung nerves are immediately put to ease.
What do you get when you put a half dozen Americans together and have them race across the northern Pyrenees? A whole lot of bewildered looks by the French.
Save for Eros “Mr. Ventoux” Poli, the rest of our merry band of cyclists really don’t speak much French. The congenial inGamba staff is of course Portuguese, meaning they’re delightfully friendly, adored by all, but most of their communication is done amongst themselves and naturally in Portuguese. Meanwhile the rest of us get by here in France with the token, oui, non, sil vous plaît, merci, crème brûlée, and my favorite, beurre. Which, I’ll point out, is nearly impossible to pronounce correctly without a lifetime of practice in the arena of guttural pronunciation, therefore we often defer to the deceptively simpler “Butter? Butter, please? Monsieur! Butter. Butter? Oui, butter! Merci, merci, merci!”
Those of you in the business world are familiar that the month of August is a vacation here in Europe. The 15th of August is the icing on August’s cake as it’s a bank holiday across the continent. Rest assured that my understanding is a bit foggy, but from what I gather it’s basically “We’re halfway through August, let’s party.”
