R.I.P., Gregg Bagni

Gregg Bagni was too much for this world. Possibly because he was not of this world.

Or so he said, anyway. Ack ack ack.

The former Schwinn pitchman and Dispenser of Alien Truth has returned to the Mothership after a snowboarding accident in British Columbia, according to Bicycle Retailer and Industry News. He may have been 72, but it’s so hard to tell with these extraterrestrial types. I mean, just look at Doctor Who.

Like the Doctor, Bagni had been known to get around and about. In November 2009 he emailed to mention, among other things, being fresh off a little spin through the Dolomites — 650 miles with nearly 68,000 (!) feet of climbing — in the company of Clif Bar’s Gary Erickson.

I had skipped Interbike that year, so I don’t know what Bagni might’ve been up to in Sin City. But if he had been there, it would’ve been something. That was the one sure thing at Interbike, year in and year out. The Bagman would be up to something, and his act was always worth the price of admission.

For Schwinn’s 100th anniversary he hired 100 Elvis impersonators to march down the Strip, led by Fr. Guido Sarducci.

In 2003 he was stalking the show with what I described in BRAIN as “a large, garishly painted wrestler who will be delighted to tie you into a granny knot while the Bagman snaps away with his Polaroid.”

And way back in 1999 — I think it was 1999, anyway — he drove a herd of cheerleaders to the VeloPress booth, where I was to be signing copies of my freshly minted collection of VeloNews cartoons, “The Season Starts When?”

I have no idea whether I was on his schedule. I do know that I didn’t want to be doing any goddamn book-signing, in public, unarmed, where all my many enemies could relish my humiliation, because I was certain that precisely nobody would want the book, especially if they had to deal with me to get one.

But I wound up signing a ton of books and people were pleasant and appreciative and I can only attribute it to extraterrestrial intervention.

Bagni was a prolific correspondent, and wrote in the manner of Archy from Don Marquis’s column in the New York Sun of the 1900s. Archy was a defunct vers libre poet reincarnated as a cockroach who borrowed the columnist’s typewriter from time to time. He had to dive head-first onto the keys to work them, but couldn’t operate the shift key, and thus Archy’s works were all sans capital letters.

In April 2021 Bagni wrote on Medium, in lowercase, about a few “great lessons” he’d learned and been able to put into play after having had a gun shoved in his face— twice — deciding he would not live past the age of 30, and “living [his] life accordingly.”

“frankly … been pretty lucky being able to ride this crazy blue ball this long.

If you read it you’ll get a good idea of how he turned out. And if you never met him, you’ll wish you had.

Peace to Gregg Bagni, his family, friends, colleagues, and co-conspirators. Ack ack ack.