Brooklyn

 Brooklyn 50 Years On

One of our favorite events in recent years has been the GIOS Raduno. Lovers of the blue bicycles come from all over to join together for a ride and lunch afterwards. Marco Gios and his friends do a lot of work to make this happen each year and there's usually something extra-special about each edition. This was the 6th.

As you can see above they celebrated 50 years since the Brooklyn Team was formed, even bringing in "Mr. Paris-Roubaix" himself for the day! Heather always thought Roger one of the classiest riders back-in-the-day so when I caught a glimpse of him signing autographs behind a crowd of people I told her to get-a-look. She's kind of shy about these things vs Zio who'll shove his way in, glad-handing all the way, but she finally saw who it was and understood why I kept telling her to get a look! We no longer need to advertise CycleItalia so we donned Brooklyn replica jerseys to go with our blue bicycles.

The ride starts/ends right at the GIOS showroom. 

We dropped our bikes off Saturday afternoon on our way to a nearby hotel, one that you can see has hosted riders better than us, including "Super Mario" back in the day according to the barman.

Marco and company laid out a nice route, mostly flat with one climb before the ristoro at the local velodrome. Above our GIOS bikes take a rest while we rehydrate. It WAS hot!

Before we got back on the road Marco took a lap around the velodrome along with the Brooklyn van. Folks from Perfetti, makers of Brooklyn Chewing Gum, the sponsor of the famous team, were there too along with some other famous people.

If you've ever watched "A Sunday in Hell" you've seen some of them - Brooklyn Team DS Franco Cribori is 2nd from left, you can see him driving the Brooklyn Team car looking after Roger De Vlaeminck 5th from left while next to him is Aldo Gios, the team mechanic seen inside and outside the car as the race progresses.

Roger gets interviewed at the post-ride awards ceremony as Aldo looks on.

Everyone went home with a special bottle of wine and musette + lots more, not to mention the great memories and camaraderie of the GIOS family.

Grazie mille, Marco, Aldo, Silvia e tutti! Ci vediamo prossimo anno!