On Italian Steel

As I have written earlier I experienced an incident which caused quite a bit of damage to Erin. Now as I work towards replacing parts that are broken beyond repair and repairing everything else I am most assuredly not giving up on my passion, even temporarily.

Although not nearly as nice a ride as Erin I have been adding mileage to my legs with my tried and true Coppi.

I was out for a short joy ride on a Sunday (October 18) afternoon when some guy on a carbon Pinerallo hammered past me going down a hill. Not to shame my Italian steel as soon as the path widened and leveled off I let fly everything I had and was probably cranking out over 50km/h into the wind (sorry no computer on the Coppi) when I passed the Pinerallo. I kept hammering just as hard as possibly could and probably reached something near 60km/h before I stopped spinning, the trail was narrowing and there was a curve coming up. When I finally looked back to find the Pinerallo it was so far behind me I couldn't see bike or rider even with my prescription sun glasses.

Its a nice feeling, to know I pack the acceleration to blow some carbon fiber beauty into the dust with an old steel frame. Now in fairness I have taken the old Ultegra groupo off Erin and put it on the Coppi, but still on a long flat trail it is not the bike, its the engine and well I think that Sunday I earned the right to gloat for a whole paragraph or two!

Anyway as the weather begins to turn ugly I find myself dreaming of rides for next year. The second trip to Lake Simcoe was clearly the high point of the season. Andrew, Ian, Thi and I had one awesome hammerfest that I would surely love to repeat next year. But what routes to take? Rattlesnake is not my cup of tea, it is, like all West routes, pancake flat until a crazy steep hill then it is completely flat again. Going East is roller heaven, but so heavily built up with dreaded bedroom communities and all the car traffic that implies I'd really rather not go there. Of course South is Lake Ontario. That leaves only one option, North!

Next year, none of this silly double imperial century crazy, just lots of hammering. Probably an ITT or three and a new goal, average speed of 32km/h from say Elgin Mills and Woodbine to Simcoe and back to Elgin Mills and Warden or Kennedy. This is not to say I would ever dream of driving a bike to the start of a ride, rather starting the clock at home will mean the numbers I have reflect my willingness to run red lights instead of my ability to ride fast.

Although I have to wonder, why do so many people drive their bike? Okay, I understand something a long the lines of, there is a race in a town two or three hundred kilometers away so drive to the race. But I see people load their bikes into the car just to drive their ride a few kilometers to the nearest trail. Such people have it all wrong, they should use the bike to support the car, not the other way around. Consider, in Serbia during the 90s as a result of the war with neighbouring states an embargo caused the price of gas to sky rocket. It got to the point that if you wanted gasoline you had to find your local black market retailer who would sell you a 1L (typically Pierre Water) bottle of liquid green house gasses for about the equivalent of $10 (USD). Driving was no luxury it just did not happen, at all, people parked the car and stopped driving. Apparently the air quality in Belgrade was quite a bit better for some time as a direct result.

I like the idea that Lesley would come to me and say, I need to load up on groceries, so I go down the street, by bike, pickup a bottle of gas and have just enough for Lesley to make it to the supermarket and back. In short, we can make do without the car, but without the bike there would be real problems. Better yet, I like the idea that with expensive gasoline the supermarket goes belly up and we return to buying our foods from the local shops in our neighbourhood. I wonder what they will do with all the abandoned homes in suburbia?

One final though, the city of Toronto may very well soon have a 315 unit condo in downtown with 9 parking spots for car-share rentals and 315 spaces for bicycles! (No space is being allocated for unit owners to have their own car.) About damn time if you ask me, just think if Lesley and I got rid of our car, that would mean space for something in the neighbourhood of 8 or 10 bikes, and the savings in auto insurance alone, we could afford to have 8 or 10 bikes... hmmmm.