Sunday, February 19, 2012

A Bike... For Life

My last weekend trip to Ciöcc's shop was inspiring again. The guy is so full of life, how could you not appreciate his joy for living? A true master of the old world frame building craft, Giovanni is still innovating and coming out with great new products. The latest of these is the Aeta, which in the Bergamascan dialect means 'Life'. Appropriately named, as this is a bike you would buy and keep for life (and the price tag requires that this purchase isn't an impulse buy).

Could this potentially be the next Cicli Masini model? I can picture one of these stainless steel beauties in a blue/yellow version, and Ciöcc says he'd be more than proud to put his name on one for me! He took me out for lunch in order to help translate to a couple of Korean customers (no, I haven't taken up Korean but they spoke very good English, and share a passion for old-school steel).

As one member of a message board recently stated, a bike like this doesn't compete with other competition bikes, but with other luxury purchase items like that new Ducati or IWB. What are your thoughts? I certainly see the average value of bikes at the local crit or cross race skyrocketing! More on that next...

ps - Post #200! Oh yeah! Thanks to all of you who visit and read my ramblings!




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5 comments:

  1. Larry and HeatherFebruary 26, 2012 at 2:21 AM

    Ciao from Sicily - is this the same guy who used to make and sell bikes with GION on the downtube? Our Bergamo amici took us to a local builder back-in-the-day who said he used to make Ciocc frames. It was a long time ago and Larry's memory of this is foggy at best. Grazie!

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  2. MasiniMarch 2, 2012 at 7:01 AM

    It certainly is. Check out the tag "Ciöcc" and see all my posts on Giovanni Pelizzoli. How are things in Sicily? I LOVE that part of the world. It was there that Italian kind of 'snapped' in my head while I did Spring Break by myself, hitch-hiking around the island alone many years ago!

    Also, how often do you get back to Sioux City? I grew up in NW Iowa and know it well...

    a presto!

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  3. Larry and HeatherMarch 7, 2012 at 1:45 AM

    I thought so, thanks! We're really starting to like Sicily and will come back next year for some of the winter. We're back in Sioux City when Heather's gotta be there to fulfill her academic requirements at Morningside so we'll be back there for the fall semester. Neither of us is from Iowa, we just moved there for her academic job back in 1996 and have been there since, when we're not in Italy.

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  4. MasiniMarch 7, 2012 at 2:09 AM

    Wow, Morningside... that brings up memories of youth. I routinely went to band camp (honest) there back in the late 80's!

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  5. Larry and HeatherMarch 8, 2012 at 5:05 AM

    We'll be back at summer's end for the fall college semester and with some luck be back here in Sicily next winter. If you're around Northwestern Iowa for any reason, look us up.

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