He's BAAAaaack!

 Super Gravel Monster lives on

Perhaps a bit less fugly than before? Zio thinks so. He missed having this bike to ride with Heather on her e-Bianchi Impulso allroad when they hit the local bike trail. Even with the fatter tires and suspension stem, the Torelli Gran Sasso was a bit harsh so having this back from the painter (grazie Michele Favaloro & Co!) is great.

No changes other than fresh paint and a new headset. Kind of an homage to Zio's original fire-road flyer, the Bridgestone MB-1 that was also red. Zio keeps thinking about a modern gravel bike but isn't too keen on disc brakes so Campagnolo EKAR isn't really exactly what he wants, so it's "Super Gravel Monster" for now, though one of these is tempting.

One other change is a 12-24 cogset in back. As a gravel bike a super-low gear like the 28 X 28 wasn't really useful while the huge gaps in the old 7-speed cassette were annoying. A 12-24 will close things up and make for less shifting on the flatter parts of the ride....or at least makes the gaps smaller.

Let's get FAT!

Let's get FAT!

Nah, we're not talking about the extra pounds you might put on at holiday time or what you might gain from restricted activity due to the pandemic, we're talking TIRES.

Zio Lorenzo's been musing about a super-monster-gravel bike project but so far has been too cheap to pull-the-trigger on one. Your can read more about that HERE.

Meanwhile, he's now mounted up these way-fat tires on the ancient MTB. These babies are FAT!!!

Fat, fat, fat!!! The old Schwinn "balloon" tires come to mind, but these are high-quality tires with a supple carcass and great ride, perfect (as they note) for making your old 26" wheeled MTB into something more useful....which really means fun, right?

Since Zio Lorenzo no longer has interest in bouncing around over big rocks (or worse, falling off and landing on 'em) he was looking for a way to turn this old bike into something more fun to ride on non-asphalted roads and trails....like the old daze in SoCal.

How fat are they? Check out the images here with the calipers showing just how fat they are. They remind Zio of the racing slick tires fitted to some small GP-style motorbikes!

They say knobs and such are only useful when there's mud or soft-enough dirt for 'em to dig in and let's be honest - how often is that the case? So why slog along pushing those squirmy (and noisy) knobs around? The GEAX tires put on this bike for riding around Rome were the eye-opener as even with their knobs, compared to the moto-inspired, stiff-carcassed Panaracer Dart and Smoke we previously used on these bikes they rolled like silk tubulars! 

These bald fatties seemed a logical next step. A fast, twisting paved descent could be BIG, BIG, fun on this bike...the V-style brakes work pretty well paired with the proper brake levers ... and there's a big contact patch of rubber on the road. But of course first ya gotta pedal it up to the top!

But for now it's providing some fun and keeping Zio from coughing up the thousands of euros for that fantasy super-monster-gravel bike.

GRAVEL 2.0

 Another gravel bike?

Super Gravel Monster 2020

Ugly, right? More than 3 decades later Zio Lorenzo's up to the same tricks. Regular blog readers might remember this post?

Super Gravel Monster 1987

Riding around on Mt. Etna awhile back reminded Zio of his original B-Stone MB-1 and how fun it was to ride, unlike the modern 29" wheeled things we rented for the Etna tour. The crazy-wide bars coupled with an insanely short stem had him scratching his bald head wondering WHY?

Nobody has been able to offer a reasonable explanation but now that gravel bikes are all the rage  Zio thought why not put some drop bars on this ancient, pre-BigTex Trek to ride around in Sicily?

This mid-90's Trek 8000's been around awhile - most recently used back when we enjoyed the American Academy in Rome. Zio thought about the drop bars then but didn't get around to it, but now that this old bike's here in Sicily WHY NOT?

Ya kind of need some fat tires to ride out here

A set of cheap bar-con shifters went on a 3T anatomic bar we had laying around. Finding a 1 1/8 quill stem for a 26 mm handlebar was a bit tougher so he had to settle for the ugly adjustable thing you see here, but a test-ride the other day over a route he would never again ride (even with a modern MTB with flat bars!) proved it was secure and safe. One can now buy drop-bar brake levers engineered to properly actuate V-type brakes so the stopping power (not to mention the feel - these are so similar to Campagnolo Ergopowers from a few years ago Zio finds himself trying to use 'em to shift, then remembers the bar-cons down below) is vastly improved over the old B-Stone's cantilever brakes with standard road levers. Zio stuck on a bar top lever for the rear brake while he was at it, just in case!

Fire roads were his thing 30+ years ago in SoCal and they have 'em here in Sicily too - they're called sterrata (as in unpaved) - this bike works very well on these, not to mention the paved sections between the dirty fun. You certainly don't have the level of control you get with a flat bar, but at Zio's age he's not interested in riding over that type of terrain anyway, flat bar or not. A 50+ kilometer mixed-surface ride this past Sunday had him smiling and remembering zooming around the dirt roads of Malibu, CA all those years ago. 

This is much better bike than the old B-Stone ever was even though it's made from aluminum. The ancient RockShox INDY fork is a nice bonus, something that didn't exist back in the B-Stone daze though Zio's gotta get used to the bobbing up and down when he stands up on the pedals. A modern lockout would be nice, but that's not in-the-cards for this cheapo project.

Zio's got a set of smooth tires to go on eventually, but these goofy-looking Vittoria skins (they used the name GEAX at the time) have a supple carcass and a fairly smooth-rolling knobby tread design - exactly as promised by the Italian bike store guy who sold 'em to us. 26" was already old-fashioned then, so these previously top-of-the-line tires were a bargain to boot! Grazie Pinato!

Not much is left of the original bike these days, perhaps just the well beaten-up frame, front derailleur, hubs and crankset? A frame designed before suspension forks makes for some slow steering but you'll hear no complaints from Zio compared to the modern, twitchy, 29" wheeled things we've ridden on Etna and in Napoli awhile back. 

Zio thought more than once of just buying a new MTB but after riding a few of 'em decided it would be a waste of money. A modern gravel bike might be OK but this thing works pretty darn well. A Favaloro custom gravel/mountain bike could be really fun, but Zio will play with this one for awhile instead before spending that kind of loot.

All that's left is to slap on the MTB style fenders for when the roads get sloppy.

Time to hit the dirt!!

"CYCLING" in Napoli

"CYCLING" in Napoli

Ugly, isn't it? Not the scenery, we mean the bike.

The scenery's just great!

Really great!

But the bike(s)? UGH!

Functional, but UGLY! We ended up "leasing" (I guess that's what you'd call it if you bought 'em with an agreement the shop will buy 'em back when you're done?) a pair of Scott Aspects to ride around while we're here rather than haul our ancient MTB's down from our HQ at Piedmont Cycling Resort.

Like our time in Rome, we soon found the cycling opportunities very limited, but were determined to not end up doing no riding during these four months. Above you see Heather in the Capodimonte park on Sunday.

Why these ugly bikes? The roads here are a lot like those in Rome. Not so much asphalt but plenty of paving stones of various shapes and sizes, making MTB tires much more fun (and safer) than anything narrower. 

Yep, you would do OK with your Paris-Roubaix roadracing machine as these roads are NOT the Forest of Arenberg, but a 2.3 tire on a 27.5 wheel is better, even if it takes a bit more effort - our object is to not lose all of our cycling fitness after all!

We went down to a local shop and threw a leg over a couple of bikes. With 29" wheels even the size M was way-too-big. The shop owner explained he didn't have any S sizes in stock - nobody wants to ride anything "small" he explained. So he ordered size S but failed to consider the smaller ones (wisely) come with 27.5" wheels, so these ended up a bit too small, especially with the ridiculously short stems common on modern MTB's.

We were kind of stuck since he didn't have much use for size S anyway and we didn't want to wait until when/if size M's could be ordered and delivered. So these bikes look even more dorky than usual with the seatposts sticking up above the max line. We supplied our own longer stems and cut the handlebars down to a reasonable width, which mostly fixed the very unstable steering characteristics in their as-delivered condition.

The result: way better than nothing and far easier (and probably cheaper) than hauling our own bikes down here. The low-end Big-S brand shifters and drivetrain seem to work just fine while the cheapo hydro disk brakes have yet to start squealing as they're prone to do. 

We'll ride 'em around until mid-May (hoping we don't snap the seatposts off!) and then hope the shop owner will honor his buy-back offer as we have zero interest in a pair of too small bikes!

GRAVEL BIKES?

NAHBS 2017 was chock-full of so-called "gravel" bikes. Even our friend Favaloro showed one.

As you can see above in this photo of Larry back in 1986, this idea isn't really new. The bike was a 1986 Bridgestone MB-1 that Larry modified, getting it ready-to-ride just before walking into the old BDS bicycle show in Anaheim, CA to find that for 1987 Bridgestone was now offering almost the exact same thing right out of the box!

Larry could have just waited a year...but who knew? This was a great bike for what these days they call gravel riding, as in SoCal fire roads. Larry dragged it east to New England and quickly found out there weren't any fire roads there! This setup was far from optimal for roots, rocks and tight trails, probably why the bike wasn't a big seller?

Or was it simply 30 years ahead of its time?

More dirty pictures

Here we are near the top of Piccolo San Bernardo on dirt. No, we didn't hump the MTB's all the way up here on the paved road, we cheated and took the lift to near the top, then climbed the rest of the way on the bikes before some enjoyable single-tracking around the valley and down towards La Thuile. We paused (again) part-way down to enjoy authentic Val d'Aosta specialities -- polenta, salsiccia, and stewed venison at a sunny rifugio while enjoying a lively conversation about LeTour and cycling in general with some Italians at the next table. We avoided most of the paved road on the way "home" by taking the trails, including the ancient Roman road that is much steeper than the modern one -- good thing we were going down!

CycleItalia gets dirty

Another gorgeous day in the mountains around La Thuile. We climbed up this double-track to get a nice view of Monte Bianco before a hike-a-bike section to complete the climb. A nice single-track descent took us back to the paved road descent from Colle San Carlo before detouring again to some nice, rolling single-track back "home". After lunch of pasta with eggplant parmesan and some local Fontina cheese we settled in to watch stage 15 of that race in France. Pretty mundane until lil' Andy Schleck managed to drop his chain and things got interesting. We dined this evening on real mozzarella di bufala in an Insalata Caprese (yes, it's not local by any means up here but we were craving some southern food after weeks of Piedmont cooking) followed by a rare steak and salad, washed down with a Nero d'Avola/Syrah blend from Sicily's Donnafugata. We'll see tomorrow on TV if Schleck gets his revenge on his rivals?