Temperature Inflation

 Temperature Inflation?

Everyone is familiar with grade inflation and in the USA, the weather reports that concentrate on some subjective "feels like" temperatures rather than tell you what the actual thermometer readings are.  Few will argue that climate change is a hoax but Zio thinks things are going too far when some call for LeTour to be held in a cooler month.

Seems like the pros train for heat (note silly photo above) but all you read on English-language cycling sites is about how hot it is at the Tour de France. Here and here, for example. Oddly enough, the Italian-language sites Zio looks at don't much mention this. 

The TV images from Carcassonne the other day reminded ol' Zio of following Le Grand Boucle all over France back in the day. Back in the day when hotels in France mostly did not have A/C nor did the vehicles you drove around in. Back then you climbed off your bike at the top of a climb and bought a boisson from a roadside vendor. A drink described as "fraiche" but it came out of a big tub...of water.

Zio had to laugh when one of these sites noted "record" heat - from records that started being kept all the way back in 2007!

What has changed? The pros used to race around dressed in WOOL jerseys and shorts in 40 C heat for Pietro's sake. And don't tell me those guys went slow...TV images the other day showed the 2026 TdF peloton ambling along at 31 kph. Even ol' Zio can ride that speed! Maybe not for 5+ hours but he's a) not a pro b) he is an old-fart.

Notably silent (so far) is the rider's union rep. That guy who seems OK with racing every January in Australia when it's 40 C while screaming bloody murder every May in Italy when it rains or snows. It's not too hot for him?

Stick-thin modern racers have high-tech clothing with ice stuffed inside, hundreds of bottles handed-up, air-conditioned transportation and lodging, popsicles, ice-vests and more. Back-in-the-day it was a cabbage leaf under your cycling cap and whatever you could beg, borrow or steal to drink in-between jumping into a fountain or river.

Zio remembers back in the 1990's when Coca-Cola was a Tour sponsor. Their slogan was "Buvez Tres Froid" as the sign shows. There was a bit of a scandal when the Tour doctor claimed riders were getting sick from drinks TOO COLD! OOOooopps!

Zio wonders if the globalization of cycling has something to do with all of this? Back-in-the-day cyclists mostly came from places it was hot in the summer like France, Italy, Spain, etc. with the occasional Australian or British rider. Brits are notorious complainers about the heat since they have only one or two days of summer each year. Could this be behind all the current whining? Note this quote from one of the articles:

“So far, I’ve coped with it quite well,” Riccitello says. “I think just being from somewhere that is quite hot, I maybe adapt better. I don’t know. There’s only so much you can do.”

Riccitello is from Arizona, USA while we currently live in Sicily. For us it's "desert rat" time - awake at 6 AM, on the bike by 7 AM and back to our tiny island by 9 AM where we can enjoy a granita with brioche! Nobody is paying us to ride after all!

Update: As of July 12 2026, 40 C is too hot to race a full TdF stage. But somehow it wasn't back in January 2026 in Australia. WTF?

Fake Booze

 Fake Booze

Fake booze? Yep, you read that right. Zio Lorenzo finds himself living in the land of great wines and he can no longer enjoy them. He made a choice after A-Fib. It was booze or cycling, since they say alcohol is a huge trigger for A-Fib. But he missed the "adult beverage" part of meals as well as the aperitivo in the evenings. Ice tea just doesn't cut it!

So it was time to explore the ever-growing 0 alcohol drink selections. Beer was easy, there are hundreds of those now and after a month or two Zio could no longer even tell the difference. But wine's a different animal. He tried all the offerings from Sicily first, then spread to all over Italy, with zero positive results. Most of 'em were like fruit punch, especially the reds.

But fear not if you're in the same situation or just want to reduce/eliminate alcohol from your diet. Heather still imbibes and Zio enjoys selecting wines for her...he can still sniff 'em after all!

After trying most of 'em Zio ended up with wines from Thomson & Scott. He thought their claims were hyperbolic but he decided to try their wines since there's a local importer with fast shipping. The verdict? Whites are pretty easy, as are sparklers like the one below from Mionetto. But reds are a challenge, most of 'em taste like something, but it's NOT wine! Zio really hates the idea of drinking wines in Sicily that are imported from South Africa, but it's not his fault nobody else seems to have figured this out, right?

The red tastes like wine, something that Zio can't say about the others he's tried. Not GOOD wine, but wine just the same - think of the quality level you get with most wines-by-the-glass. "Inoffensive" was the description Zio's late father-in-law used to use. Zio took a bottle of the white to a seafood ristorante here in Sicily and shared a taste with a hidebound wine-snob who took a break from his "that's not wine" mantra (it IS wine, the alcohol is just removed) and declared it acceptable. The snob's wife has A-Fib but refused even a taste - go figure.

Mionetto now offers a fake version of Aperol so Zio has some of that coming to see if he can make a decent spritz*. Fingers crossed!

CIN-CIN!

*Update - Mionetto's "Aperitivo" isn't much like Aperol

Happy Vernal Equinox!

 Happy Vernal Equinox!

Better late than never since it was two weeks ago but in many places (like Italy) the real celebration is that religious one with the chocolate and eggs.

Zio celebrated with a $6 slab of grilled fresh swordfish for lunch after a couple hours on the bike on a sunny, almost warm day. Heather's been hobknobbing with fellow wizards in Greece the past week and returns today for a bit of a chocolate egg and a slice of colomba.

Hope your Sunday's a great one!

Monferrato fun 2025

 Fun in Monferrato 2025

Buying new bike

Enjoying great food and wine

What's not to like? Our friends Don & Cindy are here for another week while Zio Lorenzo goes home on Sunday. They liked our e-bikes enough to consider buying some for themselves. Zio took 'em to LaBici, same folks who so nicely helped us with our MAHLE X35 bike issues.

They had Cindy's size on-hand plus a trekking model they will convert to drop bar for Don. Neither really NEEDS all that help on the climbs like Zio Lorenzo, but it's probably when rather than if, so they're going electric now.

But still eating and drinking well as you can see posing with the nice folks at La Ca Nova.

W Italia! W Vacanza!

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!!

Piedmont Vacation 2024

 Piedmont Vacation 2024

We escaped the tourist crowds in Siracusa for a few weeks recently and enjoyed cycling (and eating and drinking) at our old CycleItalia HQ, Hotel Ariotto in the Monferrato hills, just an hour from the Milan/Malpensa airport.

First, our stuff is up there. The owners kindly let us store some bikes, clothing and equipment there even though we've stopped running Piedmont Cycling Resort. The cycling's still great, the food's still wonderful and the staff is still friendly. What's not to like?

Some of the Giro stuff is still there

Three weeks to enjoy most of the routes we've mapped over the years, visit many of our favorite eateries and even explore some new venues.

Like this one! "Hic e Nunc" (Latin for here and now) was created not too long ago but their grape vines have been growing a long, long time. We'd sampled their wines a time or two but only now did we find the time to visit...

..with our friends (and long-time CycleItalia clients) Don and Cindy.

Heather was there for the first week before heading off to Greece and then  back home to Siracusa for some academic projects, but not before we enjoyed a pranzo or two, this one at one of their favorites La Ca Nova.

We'll finish with a view of the Monferrato hills. It was a great vacation and we're already making plans to return next year!

Grazie Tutti!!!

Giro d'Italia 2024

 La Corsa Rosa 2024

We raised a glass of this to "Taddy Poe-gatcher" (as many call him) on Sunday as the Giro d'Italia finished in Rome. Maybe next time we'll go see it there live? We enjoyed the first three stages in Piedmont.

Some might call the race dull since Pogacar pretty much led start-to-finish but along the way he created some nice memories, whether it was throwing out stuff to the crowd or just riding away from his rivals but somehow at the same time not making them look bad.

Sure, some will say he had no real rivals but you can only beat the guys who have the guts to show up at the start, the rest can be sore-losers though its mostly their fans that endlessly whine "If only MY guy was there!"

Well, your guy wasn't there, either by choice or accident, so too bad!

New talent was revealed, especially Italians Antonio Tiberi  (best young rider and maybe on the podium if not for an early mechanical issue?) and Giulio Pellizzari, the youngest guy in the race on a 2nd string team. Wonder if Tiberi's old team regrets canning him over the cat/pellet gun fiasco? They kept the racist tweet guy, what's he done lately? Wonder if that same team wishes they'd used something other than SRAM after the equipment failure in Rome? Couldn't help but remember Bauke Mollema's comments about their stuff awhile back, but they just keep cashing the fat checks.

Has sprinting changed? Seems like it to us..66 tooth chainrings with 11 tooth sprockets? Mamma mia! Little guy sprinters who can turn the cranks over fast look to be going the way of the dodo...will the "Manx Missile" have any luck if he makes it into LeTour 2024?

RAI TV's coverage was even better than recent years if you discount the awful Alessandro Fabretti and hapless Ettore Giovanelli, but the "dream team" of Pancani and Cassani were back together again for the stuff that counted while the Processo alla Tappa (post-race show) degenerated into a snooze.

What else was not so great? Well, there was THIS, another black-eye on the rider's so-called union. Quickly forgotten until the next tantrum from the clownish rider union official whose initials should be "CYA". Another issue was the feud between RAI TV and RCS the Giro organizer. Rather than working together they seemed to be at war, same as Milano vs RCS...another fight that makes no sense and doesn't help Italian cycling at all. 

Meanwhile, LeTour will come to Italy! We'll head up to Bologna to see a stage or two before our annual visit to our old CycleItalia HQ, Hotel Ariotto.

W Il Giro!

Ya gotta love it!

 EATALY

Check this out!

Yep, we found out about this via PEZ Cycling rather than anything on Italian TV or the race broadcast. Thanks PEZ!

We've been to EATALY stores in Rome and Chicago. If you want Italian specialties from all over the country, they have 'em!

Spring is here...almost

 Sunny Sunday in Sicily

Milano-Sanremo was yesterday. La Primavera is the start of spring and for us, the start of the real cycling season. So Sunday was time to get out on our own bikes! A ride down the coast on quiet roads, then inland and uphill, climbing what locals call Il Carciofo, the artichoke. Turns out we were on the route of the Mediofondo, Giro di Carciofi held earlier today.

No racing for us today! Our goal was to arrive at Case Damma in time for lunch! As you can see above we made it...40 kms into our ride. And what a lunch it was!! Eight or nine antipasti: fresh ricotta, salami, zucchine, olives, cheese and more followed by two first plates - a lasagne with pistachio and a pasta with tomato, sausage and wild fennel. If that wasn't enough, a second plate was served, a pork roll in a spicy sauce.

Desert was up next, a sort of tiramisu with a shot of Zibibbo wine to wash it down. We could barely get out of our chairs and back on the bikes!!!

The proprietor had this nicely restored Matchless on display so the two-wheeled connection was there too!

Meanwhile, we noticed this painted on a wall near one of our favorite market vendors the other day. The famous author of the Montalbano books, Andrea Camilleri.

Hope you had a great Sunday as well!

Buon Natale 2023

 Buon Natale 2023

This should be good with a holiday meal, no? Some roasted red peppers to start, followed by a zucchini zuppa with fresh croutons and extra-virgin olive oil drizzled on top? Then a grilled pork chop since the sun's out and the grill is ready on the terrace.

Buon Appetito!

Summer Vacation 2023

 Vacation...from vacation?

Yes, we know. Once you retire you're always "on vacation", right? So we'll call this a little trip - up to Piedmont where CycleItalia's HQ used to be.

First things first, right? Lunch at the place we used to call "the BBQ shack" but is really la cucina come una volta  Where we found the new "Queen of Gnocchi" at work but she kindly posed for a photo. Her mother used to make 'em but she passed on the touch!!!

One reason we came up here was to enjoy La Mitica once again.

New friends and old, all passionate about vintage bicycles and those who raced them. Pietro Cordelli and Co. put on a great event each year.

Next we headed for Valpelline and a hotel we'd stayed at more than two decades ago when we had some free time. During one of our last guided Alpine tours we took a ride that passed by here and stopped for a drink, wondering if the same management/owner was there?

Zellino was still there but now two people who were just children back when we first visited were running the show. Zellino remembered us from way-back-when. We decided to stay for a few days so we packed Heather's e-gravel bike and Zio Lorenzo's beautiful TOMI bike and drove up to the mountains a few days after La Mitica.

Zio figured slapping some meaty (Panaracer Gravel King) 28 mm tires on the bike he'd been enjoying the hills of Monferrato on would be fine - even if they went off the pavement a time or two.

Uh, wrong. Heather's 38 mm slick tires, low 1X gearing and e-assist made her riding fun while Zio struggled - not enough gearing, not enough tire and not enough legs/lungs for the Alpine altitude,. but we still had a great time.

On the drive back to Hotel Ariotto it was decided that Zio should cave-in and "go electric" for next time. Barely-used examples of Heather's Bianchi E-Impulso Allroad (since replaced by something more expensive in Bianchi's range) were showing up, so a few days later we drove over to Torino to score one from a private seller at a reasonable price.

Zio will be ready for the Alps next time!

Mangia bene!

 The Official Pasta of the Giro d'Italia

We admit it, we're suckers for the sponsors of the Giro d'Italia. We love the race and enjoy supporting the companies that support La Corsa Rosa, especially when their products are food or wine!

We can't find the regional ravioli Rana makes each year during the Giro here in Sicily so having it delivered made sense, especially when they pick up the tab (for the shipping)!

Next time Zio's in the supermarket, some chocolate from Novi will find its way into the basket.

Giro d'Italia rest day #1

 Giorno di Riposo

That's what they call a rest-day here in Italy. So let's catch up, OK?

First the news that Maglia Rosa Remco Evenepoel is out due to Covid-19. A real shame since the race was shaping up not to be the "Mow 'em down in the chrono, defend in the mountains" so many pundits predicted. Rigoberto Uran's out too, how many more will be sidelined before La Corsa Rosa gets to Rome?

Before all that we flew off to Napoli, rented a car and drove out to Atripalda to see the start of Stage 5. As you can see things were soggy, but that didn't stop the people from coming out! We could barely pass in-front of the Novi stand - the lure of free chocolate is pretty strong, even in the rain!

The race got started and we headed off to the finish in Salerno.

But first, PRANZO! Heather consulted our "bible" the Slowfood guide to Italy and after parking the car and some wandering the wet streets we soggily stumble into l'unico Taste of Italy. It was worth it! Sadly (for them) we were the only ones in the place as they thought the race would close access to their place by midday.

We enjoyed lots of fresh fish but since they figured on closing had nothing to offer us for dolci though they did treat us to limoncino along with a recommendation on where to go for caffe and sweets. Grazie Francesca!

Romolo was on the way back to the race finish, so off we went and were glad we did! They even served our favorite Napoli espresso so we bought a box of pods to take home.

Suitably fortified, we were ready for the race finish, still under gray skies with constant rain. But again, that didn't keep the people away!

Seemed like most headed home to dry out so we were able to get close to the presentations. Not close enough to get sprayed with prosecco but a guy behind us did catch one of the flying corks!

Post-race it was a drive along the Amalfi Coast to our night's lodging. We splurged on the best room on the place...it was just one night...and we didn't spend on dinner, just some drinks while we watched the nightly race recap on TV. Tomorrow the race would pass right by us and our plan was to escape right after so we could cut across and see 'em pass by one more time, then race off to the airport for our flight home.

The next day was better weather-wise though there were a few showers but we were able to walk down the now closed road to get pizza, which the kind hotel management (grazie Valeria!) let us enjoy while watching the race on TV.

The race came past but our "W Magro" banner didn't get on TV as the 'copter shot was too far out, but we did score some bottles as a few teams handed 'em out to their riders just before our hotel.

After quick goodbyes, we were on-the-road behind the race, but quickly stopped at the first intersection by the police. The delay made getting to the next place to see the race a tough chore and by the time we got there it was too late... so off to the airport we went....

...only to find out our flight was delayed! Grrrr! But an ice cream cone and watching the race coverage on Heather's phone made the wait not so bad and we were back home in Sicily by 11PM.