Again in Might, I used to be the fortunate recipient of a Marinoni, which I set about rehabilitating to the most effective of my meager skills:
The tip consequence was a bicycle I very a lot loved driving:
However as I’m doing my greatest to maintain the full variety of bicycles I personal in verify I in the end determined to public sale it and provides the proceeds to the Star Observe Biking program, as they have been elevating cash to ship youngsters to Junior Observe Nationals:
It ain’t a lot, however I ain’t a lot of a human being, and promoting beat-up bikes I obtained free of charge and making a gift of the cash is about as philanthropic as I get.
“So who received the bike?,” you’re in all probability not questioning. Properly, it was some man from upstate who you might know from the feedback as “Some Man From Upstate,” and this previous weekend he got here downstate to gather his prize. Out of respect for his privateness I shunned sticking a digital camera in his face to seize the second, so as an alternative right here’s a random image of somebody receiving an award:
The plan was to do the ceremonial Passing On Of The Bicycle after which go for a journey, so we headed over to so-called “River Highway,” the favored roadie route proper throughout the George Washington Bridge:
[River Road in autumn]
After days of rain the climate was positively spectacular, however we quickly discovered the onerous manner that River Highway was closed, which I might have recognized had I believed to verify beforehand:
Normally when River Highway is “closed” you simply go across the boundaries and preserve driving, however this was unhealthy sufficient that they had folks standing there to show you away and the whole lot:
Clearly we completely might have ridden that on gravel bikes, however since we have been on mere street bikes we rotated and as an alternative headed over the mighty Excessive Bridge and into the Bronx for an impromptu tour of town’s most chronically obstructed bike lanes:
[The High Bridge many, many years ago]
On the conclusion of the journey I then tried to persuade him to take George Plimpton’s Y-Foil As an alternative, however being possessed of unusual restraint he insisted on sticking with the Marinoni:
[Subtlety On Wheels]
That is in all probability a very good factor, since there’s clearly a marketplace for George Plimpton memorabilia:
And absolutely his Y-Foil will solely proceed to extend in worth till someday I’ll do an public sale with Traditional Cycle and we’ll use the proceeds to construct Star Observe a model new indoor velodrome which we’ll name the “Plimptonium:”
[Architectural plans for The Plimptonium, a.k.a. “The House That Wife Oil Built”]
However pending that, due to Some Man From Upstate for not solely serving to Star Observe but additionally liberating up a slot on my bike rack and bringing my complete variety of traditional lugged metal street racing bicycles all the way down to a extra manageable two, these being the Faggin:
And naturally the Cervino:
Of the 2, the Cervino is the (largely) period-correct one, and being barely bigger than the Faggin it affords me a considerably extra age-appropriate driving place:
Because of the voluminous tubular tires it floats over just about the whole lot:
And whereas it could be missing within the low gear division the refreshing simplicity of working a six-speed friction drivetrain with one hand makes up for it:
Six-speeds are the brand new singlespeeds.
