Nencini, Gelli and my new Galmozzi!

I had a nice weekend in Florence to celebrate the wife's birthday. She also had some meetings, so I was on my own for Friday and Saturday. With no bike to ride and two nervous wiener dogs to keep placated, I made a phone call to local Liquigas mechanic, Saul Nencini ('Nencio').

I headed to his shop (under his parents' house), where he was servicing a couple of local riders' bikes. Once they were set, we set about going through some of his recent finds, like the mint Campagnolo Grand crankset he found while in Argentina, or the PMP 90 degree crankset from back in the day. Then, he enlightened me to the bag of cork plugs that used to be placed individually into the eyelets of old tubular rims prior to glueing... very cool. After deciding that anything I still needed to finish the Ciöcc was going to be found in his attic at home, we decided to make the short trip.

On the way up, we passed this huge framed photo of Saul's dad... yes, THAT Gastone Nencini. You know, 'my Dad, who won the Giro in 1957 and the Tour in 1960'.

Upstairs, we certainly found some great Nuovo Record parts for my build and then I discovered something I wasn't expecting to find in Tuscany... the first... and second Galmozzi's I've ever seen live! The first was white and labeled 'G. Gelli' who was a local shop in Prato. Nencio really liked this one and wanted to keep it, as it was his size. The giveaway as to its true heritage was given away by the standard Galmozzi stamp on the headtube.

Nencio was a little amazed that I even knew about Galmozzi, let alone that the little known brand has become my Holy Grail of old bikes. When I saw the blue 56, I knew it had to be mine, so we quickly made a deal. I'm now the owner of a Galmozzi! I can't really say 'finally' since I've only become a little obsessed with them recently. I just never knew I'd find one in Gastone Necnini's son's attic in Tuscany!

More photos to come in another post, plus a link to the rest of the photos which are now on my Flickr page.