RIP Gianni Savio

 RIP Gianni Savio

Savio (R) with Heather and Paolo Alberati (L)

You almost couldn't watch a race in Italy on TV and not see Gianni Savio if his team was in the race! Somehow the TV camera always caught him around the finish area, often holding up the arm of one of his riders who had won the race.

A dear friend of ours from Bergamo worked for various Savio teams over the years and Giacomo found us at Letour where he was working for a combo team with 3 of Gianni's ZG riders combined with some from Telekom. We marveled at the less-than-top-tier equipment they had, laughing that our tour guests had better equipment but certainly not high-quality legs!

Here's a great obituary for Savio.And our blog post from the last time we saw him is here.

RIP Savio. A guy who certainly put sport before commerce!

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!!