Fender weather? In ’Burque? Say it ain’t so!
’Tis so.
Fanta Se got hammered the other day by what the weather wizards were calling a thousand-year storm, and we’ve had a couple doozies of our own.
They left smallish sand dunes and mud streaked across the roads, and the occasional shallow puddle, which never lasts long because this is thirsty country.
Nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution, because I hate that brown stripe up the keister, on Friday I rode the Sam Hillborne with its silver SKS thermoplastics. And yesterday I hauled out the Soma Saga Disc, which sports a set of black Soma mudguards.
Today we’re back to sunshine and homicide, so I’ll climb back aboard the Bianchi Orso, whose moment in the media sunshine is fast approaching.
It never rains, but it pours.
Mad Blog Media 
Reminds me of the roads in Sicily. The rainy season’s in February/March and the roads puddle up like that all over the place. One year I slapped some Crud Roadracer fenders on while nowadays we just avoid those low roads for a few days until things dry up. I’ll be in Napoli next year and will probably bring some fenders along – just in case.
There was a time when I wouldn’t have been caught dead riding a bike with fenders. Or racks, bells, running lights, and friction shifters, now that I think about it.
Turns out all that stuff is useful. Who knew?
How are things across the pond?
PFG (I think you can translate that?) over here though it’s as hot as most places right now. Our last clients for the year departed today but we have a journo coming next week to review the operation so we can’t take down the tent just yet. Today I visited a new cycling museum in Alessandria, just 20 minutes from here. I’ll have a post on the CycleItalia blog in a day or two about it.
This is truly paradise for a cycling fan – 3 amazing museums of cycling now within 2 hours by car from here..twisty, up and down roads almost free of cars, the best food and wine in the world, a 4 star resort to relax in, swimming pools, air conditioning..it’s all here….just an hour from the Milan airport.
https://lamonsterrato.it/ These guys have a nice video of the area Piedmont Cycling Resort is in if you scroll down the page. They offer a bici d’epoca route each year with plenty of unpaved roads, which we have yet to explore. In 2019 we hope to participate in their event with our vintage bikes for the first time. But the paved roads offer the same great scenery and challenge.
Oho, a scribe in da house. Anybody I know?
“Up and down roads almost free of cars.” Talk about your selling points. Too many of the bloody things around here, and apparently they hand out the drivers’ licenses along with the six-packs, through a drive-up window.
PEZCyclingnews is sending a guy named Chris Selden who writes for them. He says we’ve met “on a mountain somewhere in Italy” in the past, but I can’t recall the details. Someone wrote somewhere about Piedmont in general being “Tuscany without the tourists” and if that’s true Monferrato is Piedmont with even fewer, as there are a some over in the Langhe, the area of Barolo and Barbaresco fame.
One of our normally dry arroyos last week.
https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/news/national/raging-floodwaters-rush-down-normally-dry-riverbed-in-santa-fe/video/414cc09d9811bffc28cd9fc98bf61d7b
Hey, K, you folks come out a’ight, or do you have an indoor swimming pool now?
We are fine. The road we live on was a river and you could hear rocks tumbling down the street from the water moving so fast.
Hope you all, and us too for that matter, get more rain of the gentle sort. I rode this morning and no fenders needed. Our monsoon has been pretty poor so far.
The piece about the asshole who steals cars and a tractor, tries to outrun the cops on the tractor, and then bites the police dog was the piece de resistance of murder and mayhem the past few days in Duke City. It is much like Tucson in many ways including traffic.
Feast or famine, m’man. Parched or pissin’.
What a lovely fellow the tractor thief was. The ladies must love a neck tattoo that says “Blue Eyed Devil.”
It bothers me to no end that we have to tolerate, and write laws, based on those who can barely swim in the shallow end of the gene pool.
I’m guessing based on the dents in his brain-pan that he was found in contempt of cop and sentenced to falling down the jailhouse stairs.
They might have taken the boy on the Tour de Asp baton. Don’t leave home without one.
Look like with him incarcerated you may be low on witless thugs. We are pretty flush with em here in Michigan. How many ya need? And with a large prison just outside town we can recycle our knot headers and get plenty of miles out of them. One other bonus is you never lack for riding buddies. We have a bike lab where cons or soon to be ex-cons learn all about bike repair. As many of them will never see another drivers license, they are given a running bike upon release and it’s expected that they will now know how to repair things so they can show up on time for the job they can’t get. I can relate to these guys cause they hate disc brakes too. But as you would expect, you never see them riding with helmets on. Maybe wool stocking hats even in summer which indicates pretty fast they are a quart low on thinking fluids.
Pretty severe comment Herb; but I will admit that there are many socially and ethically deficient citizens out there. The justice system seems to be able to collect a few and warehouse them for a period of time without being able to influence their behavior. They just find their way back to the lives they left before incarceration.
MAGA, Tractor Steal’n..RUMP Voter…
PS…Thank God for Grant Peterson…RIVBIKES!!!
And on the opposite side of humanity, we have a guy that won’t quit, and considers the “Lanterne Rouge” an honor.
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/30/633936189/lawson-craddocks-amazing-last-place-finish-in-the-tour-de-france