Catching Up 2025

 Wow, is it 2025 already?

As they say, time flies when you're having fun? No blog post for almost a month?

OK, so let's catch up: Day after Xmas we caught a plane to Rome. Capitoline Museum and great food for a day before we got on a flight from Rome to Los Angeles. 14 hours! AGGHHHHH!

Visit with Heather's family while Zio got to visit some friends at family south of Santa Barbara

Sadly, Tony Bonello, Zio's long-time friend (above) wasn't there anymore. He'd passed away the very morning Zio showed-up looking for him at his pizza joint.

RIP Tony

We spent New Year's Eve in Santa Barbara and we're back in Sicily now, Heather's got an academic conference going while we both recover from flying 9 time zones west followed by 9 time zones east...all in barely a week!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Inflation - the good kind!

 CYCPLUS e-pump

OK, Zio hears ya - "WTF? How lazy do you have to be to use one of these?"

Lazy (or not) isn't the point. What IS the point is the difficulty of mounting a frame pump (one YOU have to pump) onto modern bicycles. Our e-gravel bikes didn't offer much of a way to carry a full-sized frame pump (though Zio later managed to squeeze one in on his) so it was a Silca Tattico mini-pump or nothing.

With gravel tires of 38 mm, it takes some pumping even with a frame pump (let alone a mini) to get up to working pressure, so this gizmo looked interesting when Zio saw it here. Thanks Pez!

It inflated tires just fine in the shop, though on-the-road test waits for the next flat. Zio had some concerns about how charged-up the thing would stay in the seat pack, but today pulled it out and turned it on...seemed like it would have pumped up several tires before he got tired of the racket and shut it off. Recharged in 15 minutes and went back in the seat pack. Seems like it'll stay ready-to-go in-between recharging the e-bike battery so when it's time for that, it's time to recharge CYCPLUS.

Pez has the details if you want one for yourself or maybe under the holiday tree?

Thanksgiving 2024

 Happy Thanksgiving!

We're thankful for a lot of stuff, too much to list here, so maybe just the fact we can ride bikes around in shorts and short sleeves to work-up an appetite?

Heather whipped-up a traditional meal, turkey with all the trimmings despite nobody in Italy knowing or caring much about this holiday.

Hope yours was great too!!!

NAPOLI!

 Quick visit to Napoli

Nick, one of the "sons we never had" along with his lovely wife Sara visited Italy last week. Zio flew up to Roma and hopped a high-speed train down to Napoli to meet them. We stayed at the Excelsior, the hotel used by Tony Soprano's crew when they visited...one of Zio's favorite episodes.

And unlike Tony and crew PIZZA was on our menu. Gino Sorbillo has a place just down the street!!!

The next day we walked around, stopping for cappuccino at Gambrinus. Sadly, the inside was closed for a private function but we did get to look around a bit before being seated outside.

And the cappuccino was still good.

But for the REAL espresso, it's MEXICO!

Followed by more walking around, including the historic center where "Harry & Leather" lived during her Fulbright program, including the bakery where Zio got his daily bread, a slice of what he called "Pac-Man" as you can see above.

There was also a stop at the MANN for culture of a non-edible variety, dinner at Umberto, even more pizza and a few sfogliatelle before we climbed on a high-speed train back to Rome where Zio got off to catch his flight back to Sicily while the "Ducatisti" continued on to Milano for their return flight the following morning.

Now Zio will start lobbying for their next tour of Italy, further south to Cilento, Basilicata, Puglia and maybe a pop over to Siracusa to visit Zio?

Arrivederci amici!

New Wine 2024

 And then there's the drinking part...

Eating well includes drinking well, right? At our house it does!

We enjoy this time of year as the new wines arrive. "Novello" isn't fancy, refined and certainly not aged, but it's FUN! We bought a box of assorted varieties, 2 from Sicilia (which if we like we'll get 6 more) plus one from Puglia, one from Veneto, one from Marche and for some real fun, a Lambrusco for the next time we get out a plate of what would be called "cold-cuts" in the USA.

Wait! There's some freshly sliced mortadella here, right!?

Cin-Cin!

Life is Good, part ?

 Eating well is the best revenge

Somebody once said that, and given the results of the USA election, what else can ya do?

We can try! That's what! Above is 20 bucks worth of fresh pasta..delivered to our front door last week. Someone left a flyer in our box and Heather called 'em up, that afternoon a guy showed up with all this!

Our guess is Il Messinese makes a lot of the fresh pasta served in ristoranti around here and was looking to pick up some extra biz? Prior to this any sort of stuffed pasta like ravioli was found only at the supermarkets and made gawd-knows-where. But now...how much would YOU pay to have someone deliver this to YOUR door!

Not delivered to our door, but just 5 minutes away by bike, we can get this fresh bread any day of the week. We think Pincio supplies bread to resellers here on the island but on Sunday when we're out for a ride a stop here is great to get a still-warm loaf for Sunday pranzo. Around $1.

There's now a running joke when Zio Lorenzo shows-up here. After showing 'em a photo of a $6 "ciabatta" in a Santa Barbara supermarket, they laugh while asking him to cough-up 6 euros!

And yes, we have a neo-fascist regime here too, but they won't be slapping any massive tariffs on anything good to eat!!

Buycycle?

 buycycle? Maybe not

What do you think when this arrives?

You can't watch much of anything cycling-related these days without seeing advertising for this operation. Makes it look easy to sell your bike, like they do all the work. Don't know what kind of commission they charge but new bicycle dealers use 'em as well to move dead-stock, close-outs, etc.

Zio Lorenzo wanted another Bianchi Impulso E-Allroad like the one he left up in Piedmont. With a few modifications it's turned out to be a fun bike to ride so why not have one in Sicily next to the fancy MV e-gravel bike? You know, something to get dirty and not care much about washing it all the time? Such luxury!

He found one on this site, made an offer that was accepted and handed over credit card info. Easy, right? The bike was at a dealer in Rimini, Italy so it should be quick to ship to Siracusa, one would think.

One would be wrong. They don't tell you up-front but for some reason 7-14 business days is their window. As soon as this was disclosed Zio contacted their customer service and asked WTF a new bike from a dealer, one that hadn't even been assembled (just hoisted out of the box for the photo) would take so long to be shipped?

Not sure if they're chatbots but a customer service message came back the next day - mostly blah, blah, blah, but saying they'd contact the seller to speed things up. They also provide a message system to the seller who replied they'd received nothing so it soon became each side blaming the other for the delay. Zio admits trying to end-run the entire process by dealing directly with the bike dealer, but they declined...so we were all stuck with buycycle, like it or not.

Nothing happened other than email exchanges for two weeks, but they didn't waste any time charging our credit card. That they're quick at!

19 days (close to their 7-14 business days) later the bike finally arrived in the box you see above. Yep, the box the shop had to wait-for (and pay-for according to them) was cheap and flimsy, especially when compared to the sturdy boxes e-bikes are typically shipped in. And they use Italy's worst shipping company, one Zio avoids even when shipping is free on anything he orders. He'll pay extra to avoid them!

Fortunately there was no real damage other than some issues with the battery system showing an error message that keeps the e-bike part from doing anything, but that can't be blamed on buycycle or even the dealer, who says everything was fine when the bike was packed.

We had similar issues with Heather's bike in Piedmont, quickly solved by an "update" performed by a MAHLE service center. Zio's currently looking into how to get that done here in Sicily*.

buycycle? Maybe not? For us, never again.

Ready-to-Ride, as long as you don't need any e-assist. Zio will ride it awhile before cutting the steerer tube to-length

*Update: Zio decided to DIY the MAHLE update since the nearest service center is in Catania, so what they call a "GCU" has been ordered. An update file has been downloaded from MAHLE's website. This is supposed to be loaded onto a thumb-drive and inserted into the GCU connected to the battery charger to update the bike's firmware they say. While waiting for the GCU to arrive Zio decided to ride "Stewie" on the bike trail despite the e-assist not working.

While putting his cycling shoes on Zio noticed the flashing pink "error" light had stopped flashing, but now the brain-unit indicated low-battery? Once we started riding it was obvious the e-assist was working while the battery charge indicator showed 89% charge. A bit later the low-battery message vanished as well so as of writing this all is well. Whether to update once the GCU arrives or leave well enough alone is the next question. Both of the X35 bikes Heather rides have been trouble-free with no updates so.... the decision was made just to ride it. So far, so good with battery charge level at 73% after a few rides. "Low Battery" turned out to be the tiny battery in the Pulsar unit and with a new one installed everything is great now. Zio even cut the steerer tube and installed a Celeste colored SMP Pro saddle.