Two Wheeled Life Part 8

 Two Wheeled Life Part 8

Quit or fired? In some ways we all knew this was coming. I think back to mentioning bringing over some MTB's to leave in Italy and the boss seeming very concerned as to whether we'd already brought them or were going to bring them? I assume he was already thinking of a post-Heather and Larry (or Leather and Harry as we'd been called) future? After a heated discussion about the boss' 1999 proposal where we'd expressed and explained our objections to doing more work for the same money, our termination notice from the boss came as no surprise but it was the "now or never" push we needed to decide whether to pursue our own program. We'd had plenty of requests for a program more dedicated to "pedala forte, mangia bene" (ride hard, eat well - the slogan we used to describe our goals to hotel and restaurant owners who heartily endorsed the idea) for almost a decade, so we thought we'd have enough ready-made clients to get CycleItalia off the ground.

Let's try it! We bought advertising in a cycling publication for January of 1999 announcing we'd broken away from the other program and were concentrating solely on Italy as the name implied. Meanwhile, in addition to creating a needed website we needed to create some itineraries, so off we went to Italy over the Xmas holidays.

But first we had a visit from a client we knew well. She said she had family in our area and wanted to stop by. We invited her for dinner and shared our plans for the future with someone we thought was a friend...not a spy. Spy she was, but we knew our former boss would find out soon enough so the only result was getting the cold shoulder from us when we later saw her in Italy with our former employer.

Winter in most of Italy is like winter in most places - cold. Piedmont and Tuscany are no exceptions, but that's where we wanted to create our itineraries based on previous experiences there. Tuscany of course was a no-brainer when it came to marketing but the great hills (and wines) of Piedmont gave us a chance to offer something new and different to the American cyclist. Few English-speakers had ever heard of it so we thought we'd have a unique program despite the marketing challenge.

We flew to Milan and rented a car which seemed to have both the most feeble headlights and window defrosting system ever made. This was made worse by the short days and wet weather. One day in Tuscany we could barely make out the sign for the hotel we were looking for which was closed for the season, though we could look through the windows of the charming ex-hunting lodge and map out some roads nearby just in case we were able to get rooms there.

Same for Piedmont. We drove south from the Milan airport motel one foggy morning, the speed limit of just 50 kph making perfect sense in these conditions. We were looking for a hotel touted as having one of the best breakfast buffets in Italy, but even before we exited the superhighway and paid our toll, we'd seen the giant pencil-like structure next to a commercial center and threw up our hands in dismay.

Heather said before we left we should check out one more place and directed me to turn into the hills we could barely see in the fog. Shrugging my shoulders, we drove on. And on, finally seeing a sign for a hotel, but nothing more in the dense fog. "Keep going" was the command so on we went into a deeper, denser fog. I stopped the car and suggested we turn around but relented when Heather claimed it had to be just over that little hill.

After that hill and atop another one, we found the hotel, open but with not much happening on this dreary December day. We headed to the reception area to see a rather scruffy man walking out, stuffing a wad of cash into his pocket. What kind of place was this? It turned out to be a place where the owners ran a ristorante (he was the chef, she ran the dining room) famous for great regional cooking. The old monastery had a few rooms set up for overnight guests above the dining room, but they'd just completed an extensive addition - two big blocks of rooms with large areas on the floor below for receptions of all types.

Ready to run it all was their only son, fresh out of hotel management school. Mamma held out a crumpled brown bag as we walked up and said "smell this" after she greeted us. Fresh white truffles, an expensive delicacy were in the bag! That scruffy truffle hunter had just delivered them! We thought this place had real possibilities and left with reservations for the following year and some ideas for cycling routes. We now had enough to promote two itineraries - Paradise in Piedmont and Undiscovered Tuscany. though there was plenty of work left to complete them before the summer tour season.

As soon as our advertising hit and after struggling to get a basic website up, calls came in from those clients who'd asked us to do our own thing. A few callers went on to describe our former boss' anger with our "nerve to use everything he'd taught us" to go into competition with him, even going so far as to threaten them with being banned from his tours if he found out they'd joined one of ours. Later we heard from one about a call he got, letting him know there was only one place left on a tour he'd expressed interest in. He signed up for the tour only to hear from other guests that the same trick had been played on them too.

A few clients made reservations while others just encouraged us, perhaps fearing we'd go bust and leave them to the wrath of our former friend if they'd joined us instead of him?

We didn't have time to care much about this, we had tour itineraries to complete! We took a spring break trip to Italy to finalize it all. We wanted accurate maps and route instructions over routes we'd either driven or ridden over...every kilometer. There were no GPS systems to help with this back then. A paper map, a clipboard, a basic altimeter (to create elevation profiles) and the car's odometer were our tools along with Heather's knack for finding great routes along with our shared knowledge of how suitable they'd be.

Too many times we'd seen the results of poor or never done work on routes - the boss would admit he'd never driven a route, just looked at a map, warning us to help head-off complaints or be on the lookout for places clients might make a wrong turn. We swore we'd NEVER do this if we were mapping out cycling routes. He'd taught us a lot, mostly about what not to do.

More than once we'd find what we thought a great route, only to see a lot more traffic than we liked. To check we'd often pull over and stop, counting cars and trucks that passed. We'd quickly know whether this was a good road or a bad one, sometimes backtracking many kilometers to find an alternative. I have to admit being annoyed when a client would get lost and when finally found, tell us the route they were on was fantastic and we should have taken them that way, oblivious to the fact we probably HAD looked at it, but decided instead on the one they missed, so how could they compare?

Meanwhile, the Tour de France 1999 route had been released and a few stages were close enough that we couldn't resist creating a "Tour de France in Italy" option for guests joining us for Paradise in Piedmont. We worked on those details later after securing hotel rooms at the finish in Sestriere, a place we'd visited a time or two with that other company.

One time stands out - following the Giro d'Italia on a stage that finished at this ski resort and even in May, it was snowing at higher elevations! The ride started with retired Giro d'Italia winner Francesco Moser riding past our vans and inviting our clients to ride with him. Despite Heather explaining who he was, he got no takers. A few hours later cold, wet clients arrived at the summit, handed over their bicycles to be put on the van roof and decamped into a warm bar to watch the finish on TV, despite being just meters from the finish line action. I somehow drew the short-straw that day and was the one staying outside in the cold, watching over the bicycles. 

A few spaces over I saw an older man in a beat-up camper trying to get it to start with no luck. I drove my van over to give him a jump-start as the battery seemed dead, probably from running his tiny TV inside to watch the race? Once it was running again, he insisted I join him inside for a coffee. I sat there next to his wet dog and smelling exhaust fumes while he smoked a cigarette and his not-so-wet wife put a mokka pot on the camper's stove. It seemed to take forever for this coffee to be ready, then he insisted on "correcting" it with a shot of grappa!! One of those "no good deed goes unpunished" things?

Surprisingly we couldn't get enough interest in our Undiscovered Tuscany to make it go, so it was postponed until the following season. Perhaps because too much of it wasn't discovered? When we did produce it, we found the clients enjoyed the undiscovered parts more than they thought they would. One day we offered a open (non-cycling) day to take a train ride a short distance to spend the day in Florence, returning after dinner.

We enjoyed some cycling of our own with the few clients who'd stayed behind, but as soon as we sat down to dinner the phone rang - the other clients had taken the train back already and now needed to be picked up at the nearby station! They were "touristed-out" they said. Luckily our hotel/ristorante partner was able to feed them dinner despite them have made no reservations in his busy dining room. We continued Undiscovered Tuscany until too much of it had been discovered. We replaced it with a Taste of Tuscany tour that kept the best parts of the former itinerary.

Paradise in Piedmont and Tour de France in Italy had enough clients to be viable plus Heather's parents decided to join us to help out. They were not cyclists, renting their own car to follow the cycling routes at a careful distance from the clients, though father-in-law eventually asked to be loaned a tire pump and supplied with water/snacks so he could really help out. "Who's up for the long ride?" he'd ask to chuckles from the clients noting he was driving a car rather than riding a bicycle.

Most of the clients on this tour knew us from the previous program and delighted in getting more of what they wanted in an Italian cycling vacation, including lunches that were a big change and a bit of challenge. With the other program a quick sandwich or maybe a simple plate of pasta was all there was time for - there was always a bit of rush/race feeling to the daily ride. Not with us! Within a few days clients were eagerly asking about the lunch stop and even enjoying a glass (or more) of wine with their meals.

Riding 50 kms after lunch combined with the 50 kms before lunch made dinner (usually not until 8 PM) appetites equally good to the delight of those who rode most of the daily route - they could eat whatever they wanted with impunity. We also never scheduled any early departures - 9 AM gave plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast, packing up luggage, paying for any extras at the hotel (wine was always included) before climbing on your bike for another days adventure.

Now and then one of those adventures might include stopping at a vineyard, an idea actually inspired by Heather's father! While stopped to regroup, he noticed that we were in the parking lot of a winery and rang the doorbell. One of the proprietors came out and spoke English well enough to engage in a lively conversation with Heather's wine-loving dad. Within minutes our group was welcomed inside for snacks and a taste (or three) of their wines. They insisted we call ahead next time for a more organized visit, something we did almost every year after.

The hotel we found in the Piedmont fog was our last hotel before returning to the lodging near the airport for convenient departures. Some of the Piedmont clients were continuing with the Tour de France in Italy segment while Heather's parents headed home. Everyone liked this wine-country hotel so much we wondered why return to the airport lodging?

A quick decision was made after checking if rooms were available to replace the ones we (hoped) we could cancel. We'd take the outgoing clients to the airport hotel to pack up their bikes and grab the cases used by clients continuing with us, at the same time picking up some incoming clients, making the wine-country hotel our new HQ/base. It was an hour away from the airport but the extra space, great riding and wonderful ristorante made it seem like a crime not to make the change.

Soon we were off to chase the Tour de France. After a short van transfer we had the clients riding on the road to the stage finish at Sestriere, an alpine ski resort. The following day we witnessed a game-changing day in pro cycling when an American from Texas took the famed yellow jersey. None of us thought what had begun that day, something that would last for years before ending in the greatest sporting fraud in history.

Our first season was a success! We set to work on 2000 almost as soon as we returned to our Iowa home.