Well today marks the end of Faggin Week here on the blog:
While I finally got a proper ride on it the other day, I got an even more proper ride on it today, with moderate climbs and descents and everything:
The bike may look its age and then some, but it feels like a million bucks, or more accurately its pre-Euro equivalent, which would have been somewhere around ITL3,000,000,000,000,000,000.
There is an allure–dare I say a romance–to the Italian road bicycle that is perhaps more powerful than any other. And of course the cycling cognascenti cogoscenti know-it-alls each have their favorite marque and builder and can identify from which Columbus tubing a bike is made simply by licking it as well as describe in great detail its ride attributes, as though their scranuses are as finely tuned instruments as sensitive as an oenophile’s tongue.
But how much of that is actually the bike, and how much of it is because we’re mostly just dumb anglophones? While I suspect the majority of classic Italian road bikes ride beautifully, I also suspect the beautiful manner in which they ride is fairly indistinguishable, and that most people form their impressions and preferences about which Italian road bike they like best based largely on the name and the paint. For example, when I was first getting really into road bikes, I thought Ciöcces (or is it Ciöcci…? Like gnocci…?) were incredibly cool:
[Via Classic Cycle]
I didn’t know a thing about them, except that the name had three “c” and an umlaut in it and was completely unpronounceable, which I found beguiling. And that was enough. In fact, I suspect the unpronounceability of Italian road bike names accounts for at least 50% of their allure:
[Seen at Jersey Cycles]
I mean it’s a real beauty, but the name with a bunch of extra letters you don’t pronounce really takes it over the top.
So would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? Consider the Cervino, which is in fact essentially a Viner, but bears a brand name most people today now associate with cheap mountain bikes at Dick’s Sporting Goods:
It certainly does smell as sweet in that it also rides beautifully, but thanks to the Nishiki decal the uninitiated 21st century cyclists simply mistake it for an old crappy 10-speed–and there’s a certain satisfaction in that, for only you know that you’re riding around with a Viner between your legs.
Ride safe this weekend, thanks for reading, and please accept my apologies for the Viner puns. But they ain’t stopping anytime soon.
