28th novembre 2012 Thanksgiving in Italy

28th novembre 2012 Thanksgiving in Italy



Last Friday we were lucky enough to be invited to a friend's place for Thanksgiving. He's an US ex-pat, living here with an Italian wife. The occasion was fantastic and a nice mixture of americans and europeans.

This is my third Thanksgivings meal. The first happened a couple of years ago and in Italy. In fact, three years ago to the day give or take was when I left the green and pleasant land of my fathers, to move to Italy. I started on 2nd December 2009 after the annual holiday on 1st December (not getting it this year as it falls on a weekend, and in Italy you lose national holidays if they fall on a weekend), and also just towards the end of the swine flu epidemic, which partly saved the company financially, and partly destroyed the people and processes, and that we are still definitely recovering from. So yes, when I arrived Dawn had arranged some activities for me to initiate my Italian life, one of those being a thanksgiving party at a work colleagues place. I made my key lime pie, the recipe that I got courtesy of Sensei Paul a few weeks before I left at an amazing Hallowe'en and ROctober Rock Band Beatles night that he hosted.

The reicpeis quick, and easy. And tasty. Of course, it can be hard to find the right sort of stuff in Italy. Condensed milk is ok (latte condensato), digestive biscuits are tricky, but the singular worst item to find is limes. Limes are a rarity in Italy. This may be because they keep their foodstuffs seasonal and fresh - but hey - when do I know when I'm going to want a delicious G n T?

This year my pie went down a treat. A lot of delicious foodstuffs were on display. A huge turkey - now that's another that's a challenge in Italy. Unlike at home where you start getting christmas stuff in early September (when I worked for Wilkos, many many years ago, I kept a little track of when Xmas stuff was first displayed, adn the earliest was the 3rd September), here you would not know that Xmas was approaching. Again it has good and bad parts. You are not overwhelmed and overburdened with commercial christmas crap and then you do not have access to any christmas stuff. Oh the yin and yang of commericalism. So, turkey is hard to get. Turkeys are rare in Italy, certainly it is hard to find in the supermarket, we found one last year but that was the first time we had seen one. Apparently you can order one from the butchers (macelleria) and that is what we will do this year, but it is very different. There does not seem to be a traditional Italian xmas meal - just lots of food, but the usual food: lasagne, bruschetta, other meats and pastas - gallons and gallons of food.

Last year we were at Dawn's family in the US and had my first proper thanksgiving spread, that was great, sweet and salty abounded.

So here's some pics.

Thanks to all

JJ

26th novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 5

 26th novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 5

And we are nearly there. A long Saturday playing with this thing, a slightly damaged toe, a bent socket wrench, a lot of Simon's special grease and eccola!

Putting the last few bits and bobs together was easy on paper, but beset with the usual difficultoes and difficulties (more later) of someone who doesn't know what they are doing. Paint was done and I started putting the other bits together. The tyres are really not up to much, a maximum of 95 psi and recommended weight to not exceed 65 kg (!!) and I managed to blow up one inner tube early on. I shall keep them only lightly inflated until I have more confidence in them, and in my ability to ride fixie.
So after wheels were prepped the first job was to put the bottom bracket in. I had been warned about putting the BB in, and was not sure that I had even purchased the correct one. Borrowed a bit of Simon's special grease and started to install and it seemed pretty sweet. Sweet until I had about 6 turns left when it became hard.  Very hard. Had I blundered with the sizing or the type, or was I jsut being a wimp? Did I have the correct tool for the job? that is a very leading question. I had purchased the bottom bracket on line with a buyer beware notification that it may well be incorrect. I had also purchased the bottom bracket installation tool, which required a socket wrench. And I didn't have one here.

In the UK, I could have popped to Halfords, or Tescos or the 99p shop or just about anywhere to buy one but here I know of only one place, a 30 minute drive away near Colle Val D'Elsa which sells stuff like that. I jollied off there and of course it was shut. All shops, especially remote ones, shut between 1300-1600 on Saturday. So I racked my brain and tried Decathlon. No joy there, although I did buy a chain cleaning rig and an indoor bike trainer(!). Then I went to Coop which has recently expanded it's tool range, but no luck. Then I went to Pam. No luck. Then I was driving around, looking for a petrol station that might have some tools (all shut). As I was heading to another shut shop I remembered the "Chinese Shop" - a shop selling lots of random stuff including some tools, and as luck would have it, in there I found a strange kind of socket wrench.

So, as I was tightening the wrench it got hard. At this point I was still using my workstand. Mistake. This was when I had the catastoephree or difficultoe. The frame fell out of the stand and landed plumb on my toe - my toe was ok, but went through waves and waves of pain all night, dulled by a lot of ibuprofen and a bottle of wine. The bike survived but suffered a couple of chips in the paintwork. It appears what I thought was lacquer was not, but it was just clear paint. Thankfully Stu has come good and will ship me some real lacquer soon.

The installation of the bottom bracket took about two hours. I was on the floor, pulling the wrench as hard as I could. I was using a seat post over the wrench as extre leverage and was levering against the downtube against my stomach. Towards the end the wrench was bending massively. For each attempt I was able to turn about a 20th of a full turn, and then needed to catch my breath for a minute! So, something was a little wrong, but that's not unexpected from a frame that hadn't been touch since it was made 28 years ago! Maybe I didn't need to change the BB, but it felt good putting a new one in, and this is an educational experience anyway!

Bottom bracket in, eventually, I started with the rest. Wheels were built, and the chain needed to go after the chainset. Cue the big Sturmey Archer 42 x 17 fixie with a 19 free on the flip flop. I built it up with the fixie, and after fiddling and making several great errors with the chain, having the chain pins fall out, I got it all on and looking very toooiight.

Next came the seat post. This is a little too loose and slides down, gaffer tape is attempting to hold it in place, but I may have some problems here - I have some metal spacers but they are too thick. Handlebars are in, and looking good. For the front brake I need to drill a bigger recess in the back of the fork to allow the modern brake to fit in. I'm not going to do this right now, and maybe never!

And finally the front wheel. Should be a simple but the fork wheel "holes" were always too small, and always were. When Dean used the bike this year in L'Eroica (www.eroica.it) a kind mechanic filed out the holes a little. It was always a problem - here are some pictures from the previous year, mid race when we are trying to change the front wheel out, after a couple of punctures turned it from round to something oval. Now this is very cool for Biopace, O-Symetric or Q-rings (http://www.competitivecyclist.com/whats-new/the-curious-case-of-osymetric-chainrings.415.html) but not so cool for a front wheel :)

Eventually I got out the big hacksaw and sawed straight through the holes. Done.

And here we are. Almost there. A couple of more mods and it will be ready for taking some nice photos. In the meantime my decals arrived - I got some guy in the UK to print on sticky a badger head (from Meles BC), a JJD #1 and a zitto e pedala. Just need to decide where and how to mount them. Plus, the lacquer is still lacking :)

Zitto e pedala!

21st novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 4

21st novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 4

We are now getting down to the pointy end of "The Project". The painting of the white has been completed and now I am lacquering. Well, I think I am lacquering but really it seems that I am just spraying clear paint over the top "brillante trasperento". Lacquer is crucial to avoid chipping and damage, and is possibly the most important part, and I have no idea if I am doing it right. The Italian word for lacquer appears to be "lacca" but I could not find any anywhere. So I am going heavy. I will have used two full spray cans of lacquer by the end which I hope will be sufficient. This is on top of one can of red, one can of green and two cans of white. I have probably doubled the weight of the bike :)

Meanwhile I have been artisinally customisng the handlebars - for these read hacking them down to some quasi-bull bars. It took several types of progressively larger hacksaw but eventually the one below was able to cut off the required part.

The lacquer goes on and on and on, taking advantage of a rare alignment of both peace and tranquility. Aided by my beautiful assistant, as ever!

And now the "stuff" hass arrived, courtesy of singlespeedcomponents.co.uk. I decided to get everything from there, including tools that I didn't have so that I could get it all in one fell swoop.
Here is my list of purcahses:

Gold SSC Premium Wheelset 130mm O.L.D.          

17T fixed cog /18T free                                              

Red tyres plus tubes                                                   

Chainset and Bottom Br. Suntour Black 42t               

Microadjust Seat Post 24mm                                                 

BLB Red Saddle                                                         

Tektro dual pivot front brake                                       

Single front Lever Tri                                                  

Chain Whip                                                                

ISIS Bottom Bracket tool                                            

Chainset Tool                                                             

Lock Ring Tool                                                                        

Brake Cable                                                               

Chain                                                                           

MKS Pedals, Road                                         

Red Bar Tape  

And it's all here. I've played with a few bits and bobs, blown up one inner tube since the hipster-style only allow pressure up to 95 psi - che palle!

So I am awaitng the lacquer to dry and will assemble, including the oh so delicate bottom bracket insertion on Saturday. If I fudge this part up then the frame is dead. So I'd better do that right and make sure I've not had too much fun at Derek's thanksgiving's party!

Onwards and upwards!

12th novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 3

12th novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 3

On Sunday it rained. It rained and it rained and it rained. People swam in St. Mark's square in Venice. L'ire di Dio!

This did not help the project but I plugged on. In a small garage on the land I put on all the primer. I thought one can would be more than enough, but it just about lasted to the end. Could have probably done with another coat, but I could not wait. And of course, shops in Italy that sell useful things do not open on a Sunday.

I started the real paint job. Drying is going slow with the rain and the damp, but it is starting to come together. A couple more coats of red and green and we shall be on for the white. Working in the slightly dark garage, with my new 300 lumens Moon power bike light is not ideal, but I'm very eager to get on with it.

Next step is some decals. I am thinking of having "zitto e pedala" on the top tube - "shut up and pedal" - I confess I saw it on another bike manufacturer - I forget which, and of course I need some sort of makers badge on the front - for me it might be a makers badger :)

 Meanwhile I continue with the other tasks. Here is the handlebars which are in cracking condition, after I've jiffed off the old handlbar tape. I will saw them down to make bull bars.

And on with the next coat of paint - as soon as the rain stops!

A dopo.

11th novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 2

11th novembre 2012 Fixie project phase 2

The project continues apace. Thanks to Simon who lent me a big bag of tools, I hace stripped down the Peugeot to it's bare bones. Well, not completely bare, as I was not tooled up to remove the chainset or bottom bracket. Next step was to remove the old paint, which I started in the vening after a couple of drinks, and the smell of the paint thinners gave me a headache, and seemed to be more effective on my head than on my bike paint. Of course, prior to all this I had to go and get some kit. Painting tools (v. verniciare) - spray paint (bombeolette di vernice), primer (prima mano di vernie), sandpaper (carta vetrate) along with paint stripper, a wire brush, and an enormous spanner. Of course, the hard thing was finding all this stuff in Italy. When I went back to the UK last weekend, I landed after midnight, picked up my hire car, and whilst driving home (a bit homesick, schniff schniff) I passed the 24 hour Tesco and stopped in. I almost cried at having a shop that could do EVERYTHING, open at 2am. Wonderful. Such things don't exist in Italy, and I see the good and bad in this obviously. Every British high street is the same with same old shops, Poundsavers, Subway, McDonalds, Greggs, Boot, WHSmith, M&S, etc etc but at the same time it can be impossible to find "stuff" in Italy. Thankfully I remembered a DIY-type shop about 20 miles away and managed to get most stuff from there.

In the morning things didn't look so great. I decided to go and get professional help to remove my bottom bracket rather than wait for my tools to be shipped from the UK. I have had a hate hate affair with bike shops around here. I would expect there to be a huge amount of amazing bike shops here in real cycling country. Well there ain't. It has been very very disappointing. In Siena there are two bike shops - Fratelli Rossi which is more focused on hiring crap MTBs and doing moped stuff, and DF bike on an industrial estate which is never open and now seems to focus on bike hire. Further afield there is Gippo Bike - good and nice guys but they let me down whilst twiddling my L'Eroica bike (in fact - this bike! in it's last iteration) which meant I used Nencini sport a hundred kilometers away in Prato. Actually Nencini has recently expanded it's store and is where my Scott came from (second hand = usato). I was there recently with a friend looking for bikes and I was shocked that there was not a single one with electronic shifting in a really excellent and very large shop. Catch up Italy!

So, I went to DF bike which was the closest and they were shut of course. Then I went to Gippo Bike and they did me good. I had a good chat with them and the owner sorted it all out, getting past several silly obstacles, expected when a bottom bracket hasn't been removed for 25 years or more! In the end, we (yes, we) put the bike in a workshop table mounted vice to get the bottom bracket off. I also bought a very nice professional workstand for a very reasonable price which is great.

Outside in the sun, myself and Bunny sat and got all the paint off. Jeepers it was a lot of work, and I regret not buying one. No - that's not true. I am not doing it this way to save money (luckily enough - as it is FAR more expensive) but I am doing to give myself a bit of a bike education. So after hours of sanding my fingers off, we are at raw frame. I am surprised really that the Peugeot Esprit Carbolite 103 piece of crap is actually not too bad a frame when you get down to it.

Ready for priming!

11th novembre 2012 Words fail me UCI!

11th novembre 2012 Words fail me UCI!

It has been a very tough few weeks for cycling. The reasoned decision from USADA (http://cyclinginvestigation.usada.org/) into Lance Armstrong has thrust cycling into the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Questions have been asked about Pat McQuaid's presidency of the UCI, and the lackof action to stamp out doping. Team Sky have forced all their staff and riders to swear that they have not doped or leave the orgnaisation, and some notable ones have left including Bobby Julich and Sean Yates. Then both Bradley Wiggins and Shane Sutton, a coach of Team Sky, were knocked off their bikes within 24 hours of each other. Wiggo left hospital fairly quickly with just a mangled hand and some damaged fingers to deal with. Shane Sutton had bruising to the brain and needs to be kept in hospital for a few days - we wish him a speedy recovery.

 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/bradley-wiggins/9663169/Bradley-Wiggins-taken-to-hospital-after-being-knocked-off-bike-by-van.html)

Wiggo demonstrated that his fingers were not adversely hurt when leaving hospital :)

And we are greeted by something inexplicable. UCI World Champs next year is being held in Tuscany, north of Florence, I certainly hope I am here to watch that race. Anyway, ridiculous as it sounds to the non-Italians, the UCI have chosen, at this delicate time, to use Pinocchio - the little wooden boy whose nose grew longer when he lied, to be the mascot for the race.

www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/cycling/9637244/UCI-turns-to-unlikely-figure-of-Pinocchio-to-promote-2013-World-Road-Race-Championships-in-Tuscany.html 

In Italy, Pinocchio is remembered in a different way - it really is a story about Geppetto, an inventor from a small Italian village, making a boy from wood, but the rest of the world focuses on the lying and the nose growing.

If only cyclists were made from wood. Here's to hopes for a clean future.

And here's the route:
http://www.florence2013.com/the-route-world-race-championship/

Ciao.

9th november 2012 Fixie project start

9th novembre 2012 Fixie project START

Today I am starting my fixie project. Rather than taking the simple route of buying a pre-built fixed bike, I have decided to make my own from my L'Eroica bike. There are two reasons for this:

1) The number of bikes that I own is perilously close to S-1 (Velomenati Rule #12 (http://www.velominati.com/the-rules/)) and buying another bike for a fixie/winter trainer would be relationship suicide. And we have no space - currently in our loft space we have: my Scott race bike, my Claud Butler touring bike, my Claud Butler MTB, my Peugeot (above), a BSA 1930s tandem, Dawn's MTB and Dawn's road bike. 

2) I want to learn about bikes and how they work. I'm ok at riding bikes, but I am useless at repairs and knowing how they work. So this will be a vaulable, and costly lesson, as it is going to take me a lot of time and cost significantly more than if I went out and just bought one!

So - why fixed gear? Why another bike when I already have some rather splendid bikes? (Ignore rule #12 aka n+1) Well, the legend that is Sheldon Brown says it all here:

http://sheldonbrown.com/fixeda.html

And most spectacularly he quotes:

I still feel that variable gears are only for people over forty-five.
Isn't it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailer?
We are getting soft...As for me, give me a fixed gear!

--Henri Desgrange, L'Équipe article of 1902

So - what is fixed gear? Well simply, instead of having a freewheel whereby you can stop pedaling and the bike continues to move forward, with fixed if you stop pedaling, the bike stops (often painfully I would imagine).

But coming back to the essence it's a pure form of cycling, apparently giving you a greater feel for the road, a better workout, better for your knkees, giving you a better pedaling shape. Also there is no fluff - no gears, brakes, levers, wires, derailleurs - so the bike can be more pure.

And it's really cool. Super urban chic. Not that I could ever be like that, but we all have desires.

So, I embark on this mission and will update you all.  Wish me luck!