Castell'Arquato, Province of Piacenza

Having cancelled the trip to Delta del Po we decided to do an 80 Km tour around the Province of Piacenza in the Emilia-Romagna region. Riders met at club headquarters in San Massimo and then we drove to Piacenza. We first visited Castell'Arquato in the hills of Val D’Arda, followed by a visit to the medieval Borgo di Grazzano Visconti.

The origins of Castell'Arquato are uncertain. It is believed originally it was a Roman military settlement. During the Roman Imperial Era it developed into a small rural town, thanks to its favorable position on a rock outcropping which overlooked the routes from Piacenza and Parma toward the Ligurian sea (Liguria is at the end of the Piacenza valleys). It has maintained its appearance as it was in the early 10th century.

Cycling in Castell'Arquato was a challenge with very narrow streets made up of large river rock. There were narrow stone tracks, about 6 inches wide, you could ride on but it took skill. After exploring we posed for a group photo in the central piazza next to the tower of the Visconti Castle.

The next stage of our tour would take us to Borgo di Grazzano Visconti.

Photos: sunrise in San Massimo (Verona) as I rode to the Gruppo 1 headquarters to meet the van, the road up to Castell'Arquato, group photo in the central piazza, wonderful architecture, Daniela navigates her way through town.

A Bike Theft & Recovery Story

Stealing bikes is a very popular past time among thieves in Italy. City bikes are their favorite targets but you also have to keep a watchful eye on your road or mountain bike.

So, it was with interest that I read the story in our local newspaper that Paola Pezzo's two Sydney 2000 Olympic Gary Fisher bikes were recovered this week after being stolen in 2001. They were recovered by a fisherman in Lake Garda! One bike was the pink one used in her Olympic gold medal victory ride and the other was a one-off super lightweight aluminum bike that had a gold powder finish. They apparently have been in the lake since 2001 with the gold powder covered bike having survived without any corrosion after 6 years.

Photos: 3 photos of Paola Pezzo in 2000; Paola recently in her very nice bike shop in Bardolino.

Newspaper article:
"Un pescatore, Antonio Ragnolini, l’ha trovata mentre setacciava il lago con una rete. C’era anche la Gary Fisher con cui fu vinto l’oro olimpico di Sidney 2000.

Due preziosissime biciclette con cui Paola Pezzo ha vinto le Olimpiadi di Sydney del 2000 sono state restituite dal lago, nel golfo di Garda, impigliate tra le maglie della rete di un pescatore che stava inseguendo una tinca. Il 27 agosto Antonio Ragnolini, pescatore che abita in paese, stava pescando vicino al porto quando ha sentito qualcosa «opporre resistenza». Così aveva «catturato» le due biciclette. Bici che, alle 11,45, ha immediatamente depositato al comando della polizia locale del Comune di Garda. Il ritrovamento era stato comunicato dai vigili ai carabinieri di Bardolino, che erano risaliti alla denuncia della Pezzo la quale, a Bardolino, è titolare del negozio sportivo «Olympic Bike center». Sono due bici che questa campionessa di mountain bike, originaria di Boscochiesanuova ma oggi residente a Garda, aveva usato alle Olimpiadi del 2000 in Australia. Una è la «Gary Fisher» rosa con cui aveva gareggiato a Sydney, l’altra è pure una «Gary Fisher» ma con una particolarità unica al mondo: «E’ preziosissima perché fatta in alluminio leggerissimo ma è ricoperta di una vernice di polvere d’oro che nemmeno l’acqua del lago in questi anni ha potuto intaccare», spiega il suo compagno, il bresciano Paolo Rosola. Le due biciclette erano state rubate nell’inverno del 2001 dalla casa che la coppia stava costruendo a Garda. I due erano fuori, ma, quando erano rientrati, avevano trovato tutto messo a soqquadro. «Sono felice che il lago ce le abbia ridate e che siano tornate a casa», commenta la campionessa. «Siamo grati del gesto di valore civico, che forse non tutti avrebbero compiuto», rileva Rosola. «Certamente sapremo dimostrargli la nostra riconoscenza»".

Using Common Sense, Skipping a Ride

This Saturdays' ride is scheduled for the Po Delta. We did this ride last year and it was one of my favorite since I've been here in Italy. Unfortunately, in the last few days there have been announcements from the Ministry of Health of an outbreak of "chikungunya", a virus is transmitted by mosquitos, in the area of Ravenna and neighboring towns. This puts the outbreak just south of the Po Delta so I have decided to skip the ride.

This is the first outbreak of chikungunya in Europe, but follows multiple reports of imported chikungunya illnesses in persons returning from India and Indian Ocean islands, where large outbreaks occurred in 2006.

Further, the AFP reported:

ROME (AFP) — Italy's health authorities said Wednesday they had recorded more than 160 cases of the mosquito-borne chikungunya virus, in what one expert said could be the first outbreak outside the tropics.
"We have about 160 confirmed cases of chikungunya in the Ravenna region" in northern Italy "and about 30 in neighbouring villages", Professor Antonio Cassone, head of infectious diseases at the National Institute for Health, told AFP.

Cassone said the outbreak was caused by a foreigner who brought it to Italy.

A report from Italy's ANSA news agency said the person who had travelled in India visited friends in the region without realising he was infected, and mosquitos had spread it further.

Health ministry officials told their European counterparts last week there had been more than 100 cases and advised travellers to protect themselves against mosquito bites.

Professor Antoine Flahault, who coordinates French research on chikungunya, said the Italian outbreak was a "world first" outside the tropics. Writing in the Quotidien du Medecin journal, he said the extension of the virus beyond its Indian Ocean origins was "worrying without being alarming", noting that other so-called tropical diseases had spread across the world.

The very high density of mosquitos in and around Ravenna had fuelled the outbreak, Cassone added. "The mosquito vectors (carriers) of this disease have been in Italy for several years. All we know is that increased temperatures and humidity make the climate more tropical and favour the proliferation of mosquitoes," he said.

He rejected suggestions that the mosquitos that carry chikungunya could also carry malaria, although he acknowledged there was "a possibility" that they could transmit dengue fever. The virologist said the situation in Ravenne was under control and measures had been taken to reduce the number of mosquitoes.

Chikungunya gets its name from a Swahili word meaning "that which bends up" because of the arthritic-type symptoms that leave victims stooped.
Also causing fever, headaches and muscle pain, it has traditionally been present in eastern Africa, southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Most patients eventually recover.

Photo: images from 2006 Delta del Po ride

UPDATE:

from the New York Times, December, 23, 2007:

As Earth Warms Up, Tropical Virus Moves to Italy

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: December 23, 2007
CASTIGLIONE DI CERVIA, Italy — Panic was spreading this August through this tidy village of 2,000 as one person after another fell ill with weeks of high fever, exhaustion and excruciating bone pain, just as most of Italy was enjoying Ferragosto, its most important summer holiday.

“At one point, I simply couldn’t stand up to get out of the car,” said Antonio Ciano, 62, an elegant retiree in a pashmina scarf and trendy blue glasses. “I fell. I thought, O.K., my time is up. I’m going to die. It was really that dramatic.”
By midmonth, more than 100 people had come down with the same malady. Although the worst symptoms dissipated after a couple of weeks, no doctor could figure out what was wrong.
People blamed pollution in the river. They denounced the government. But most of all they blamed recent immigrants from tropical Africa for bringing the pestilence to their sleepy settlement of pastel stucco homes.
“Why immigrants?” asked Rina Ventura, who owns a shop selling shoes and purses. “I kept thinking of these terrible diseases that you see on TV, like malaria. We were terrified. There was no name and no treatment.”
Oddly, the villagers were both right and wrong. After a month of investigation, Italian public health officials discovered that the people of Castiglione di Cervia were, in fact, suffering from a tropical disease, chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe.
Aided by global warming and globalization, Castiglione di Cervia has the dubious distinction of playing host to the first outbreak in modern Europe of a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics.
“By the time we got back the name and surname of the virus, our outbreak was over,” said Dr. Rafaella Angelini, director of the regional public health department in Ravenna. “When they told us it was chikungunya, it was not a problem for Ravenna any more. But I thought: this is a big problem for Europe.”
The epidemic proved that tropical viruses are now able to spread in new areas, far north of their previous range. The tiger mosquito, which first arrived in Ravenna three years ago, is thriving across southern Europe and even in France and Switzerland.
And if chikungunya can spread to Castiglione — “a place not special in any way,” Dr. Angelini said — there is no reason why it cannot go to other Italian villages. There is no reason why dengue, an even more debilitating tropical disease, cannot as well.
“This is the first case of an epidemic of a tropical disease in a developed, European country,” said Dr. Roberto Bertollini, director of the World Health Organization’s Health and Environment program. “Climate change creates conditions that make it easier for this mosquito to survive and it opens the door to diseases that didn’t exist here previously. This is a real issue. Now, today. It is not something a crazy environmentalist is warning about.”
Was he shocked to discover chikungunya in Italy, his native land? “We knew this would happen sooner or later,” he said. “We just didn’t know where or when.”
It certainly caught this town off guard on Aug. 9, when public health officials in Ravenna received an angry call from Stefano Merlo, who owns the gas station.
“Within 100 meters of my home, there were more than 30 people with fevers over 40 degrees,” or 104 Fahrenheit, said Mr. Merlo, 47. “I wanted to know what was going on. I knew it couldn’t be normal.”
August is not the season for high fevers, Dr. Angelini agreed, and within days of interviewing patients she was intrigued.
“The stories were so similar and so dramatic,” she said. “But we had no clue it was something tropical.”
Hard-working shopkeepers could not get out of bed because their hips hurt so much. Able-bodied men could not lift spoons to their mouths. (Months later, many still have debilitating joint pain.)
From the start, doctors suspected that the disease was spread by insects, rather than people. While almost all homes had one person who was ill, family members seemed not to catch the disease from one another.
They initially focused on sand flies, since the disease clustered on streets by the river.
Canceling their traditional mid-August vacations (in Italy, a true sign of panic), health officials sent off blood samples, called national infectious-disease experts, searched the Internet and set out traps to see what insects were in the neighborhood. The first surprise was that the insect traps contained not sand flies but tiger mosquitoes, and huge numbers of them.
The scientific survey confirmed what residents of Castiglione had come to accept as a horrible nuisance, though not a deadly threat.
“In the last three or four years, you couldn’t live on these streets because the mosquitoes were so bad,” said Rino Ricchi, a road worker who fell ill, standing at the entrance to his neatly tended garden, where mosquito traps have now replaced decorative fountains. “We used to delight in having a garden or a porch to eat dinner. You couldn’t this year, you’d get eaten alive.”

Said Dr. Angelini: “They were treating the mosquitoes like an annoyance. They knew that mosquitoes could spread tropical diseases but they had peace of mind because they knew this didn’t happen in Italy.”

Ravenna immediately set about killing the bugs in the hopes of containing the epidemic. Workers sprayed insecticides and went into each family’s garden, emptying flower pots, fountains and the rainwater collection barrels to remove the mosquitoes’ breeding ground.
By early September, there were no new cases in Castiglione di Cervia. But there were a number of mini-epidemics in the region — in Ravenna, Cesena and Rimini — set off by tiger mosquitoes there. Each was controlled in the same way.
By that point, the doctors had cataloged the patients’ symptoms and tried to match them to mosquito-borne diseases.
“We realized,” Dr. Angelini said, “we were seeing a photocopy of an outbreak on Réunion,” a French island in the Indian Ocean where more than 10,000 people have contracted chikungunya in the last two years. Blood tests confirmed the diagnosis. By summer’s end, home-grown chikungunya had been diagnosed in nearly 300 Italians.
Chikungunya is spread when tiger mosquitoes drink blood from an infected person and, if conditions are right, pass the virus on when they bite again. Tiger mosquitoes first came to southern Italy with shipments of tires from Albania about a decade ago but their habitat has expanded steadily northward as temperatures have risen.
But the doctors were baffled by how chikungunya made its way into mosquitoes in northern Italy since no one in Castiglione di Cervia had been abroad. In the past two years France, especially Paris, has had a number of imported cases of chikungunya, in travelers returning from Réunion. But the disease has never spread in France, because the mosquito cannot thrive there yet.
Eventually investigators discovered a link: one of the first men to fall ill in Castiglione di Cervia had been visited by a feverish relative in early July. That relative, an Italian, had previously traveled to Kerala, India. Chikungunya traveled to Italy in his blood, but climatic conditions are now such that it can spread and find a home here.
Now it is winter in Castiglione di Cervia, near freezing as the sun went down on a recent evening and Christmas lights glowed across the piazza. There are no mosquitoes now.
But dozens of residents still suffer from arthritis, a known complication of chikungunya.
Mr. Ricchi, the road worker, says he still has trouble clenching his fists, and his left ankle has horrible pains. Three people in the town died after getting the virus, Mr. Merlo said, although all of those victims had other illnesses as well.
From the start, townspeople noticed that the very elderly never got the disease. Now it makes sense: “If all you do is walk the 50 yards from your home to the church, there’s not much chance to get bitten,” said Mr. Ciano, the retiree.
But the biggest mystery is whether chikungunya will emerge here next summer. In the tropics, it is a year-round disease, since the mosquitoes breed continually. But the virus can winter over in mosquito eggs, too, and no one knows if there are reservoirs of sleeping eggs in some pool of water in Italy.
With climate change at hand, Dr. Bertollini said, chikungunya will surely be back somewhere in Europe again.

Venice: The Races

Venice is, probably, the only place in Italy where there isn't any bike racing, or cycling for that matter. The Venetians have of course created there own parallel universe and Sunday we were on hand for the famous "Regatta Storica". Venice's most traditional celebration, it first started in 1315 to celebrate the power of the Serenissima Repubblica.

The Regata Storica is the the annual trial of strength and skill for the city's gondoliers and other expert rowers. It begins with a procession of decorated historic craft along the Grand Canal course, their crews all decked out in period dress. The procession is followed by four races:

1- regata of the "giovanissimi" in su "pupparini" with two oars

2- the women's regata in "mascarete" with two oars

3- regata delle caorline in "caorline" with six oars

4- regata of the champions in "gondolini" with 2 rows (the most popular race as the gondolini, small gondola type boats, are the Formula 1 of water).

Watching the races from a gondola, with wonderful music filling the Grand Canal, was an incredible experience. Highly recommended!

Photos: 2 from the procession; 2 from the 6 oar caorline race (notice how the oars bend; you can see the bow of our gondola and how cloose we were); the gondolini racers were three abreast about 100 meters from the finish line, CASTELLO won.

Ride to Lago di Tenno

Saturday's ride was to Lago di Tenno north of Lake Garda in the province of Trento. The ride start was going to be in Porto, 55 km from Verona. All the club members decided to drive to the start but I wanted to get one really long ride in before the Granfondo Avesani. The ride itself was going to be 105 km so that meant it would be a 215 km (133.6 mile) ride for me.

I departed Verona at 6:45 a.m. and spun all the way to Bardolino. There I grabbed the wheels of passing cyclists here and there all the way to Porto were I arrived exactly at 9:00 a.m. for the ride start.

From Porto we headed north along the east coast of Lake Garda to Torbole, then Riva di Garda at the north end of Lake Garda. From Riva we did a beautiful, not so difficult climb, to Lago Tenno. An alpine lake, Lago di Tenno, is a beautiful turquoise color. From there we cycled north through a beautiful valley before turning back south towards Riva, and back to Porto.

In Porto we had a nice lunch at the campsite where Gruppo 1 club members Atillio and Juliana spend their weekends away from Verona during the summer.

After a long lunch of good food, wine, I was wishing that I didn't have to ride all the way back to Verona. But, I did.

Photos: Lago Tenno; Riva di Garda (from a previous trip)

Interesting Encounter in Bassano del Grappa

After our Monte Grappa climb ride, previously detailed, we rode into Bassano del Grappa to have grappa on the famous wooden bridge.

Grappa is a uniquely Italian drink. Traditionally made from pomace, the discarded grape seeds, stalks, and stems, that are a by-product of the winemaking process. It was originally made to prevent waste by using leftovers at the end of the wine season. Grappa is primarily served as a "digestivo" or after-dinner drink but may also be added to espresso coffee to create a "caffe corretto".

It was here, on the bridge, that a gentlemen came up to a few of us and started asking us questions about where we had been on our ride. Speaking perfect Italian he said he has been in the U.S. Army during World War II. In Italian I explained that I was American as well. His long story then began to unfold: From Detroit, enlisted in the U.S. Army, fought in Italy, fell in love with an Italian, and remained in Italy after the war ended. Lives in Bassano del Grappa.

In the photograph he is showing me a news clipping from World War II reporting of his service in Italy.

Campagnolo, Olive Oil, And The Awful Truth

As written by "Gregory Taylor" on http://www.roadbikereview.com/:

God, I love working on Campy Ergo shifters. You know the ones I'm talking about: those fancy ten speed brake/shifter combos that pop up on really fancy bikes. Complicated carbon fiber and aluminum confections, holy objects of veneration in the Church of Campagnolo, worshipped by the faithful, desired by the masses. Cradling its black rubber hood and smooth carbon brake blade in your hands while clicking through the gears provides a sensuous tactile feedback, a beautifully machined music-box of sprockets and cogs that must rival the latest Ferrari or a Swiss watch in terms of quality and complication. Lean, stylish, and above-all Italian, Campagnolo ten speed Ergo shifters (especially the coveted Record ones) are nothing less than the playthings of the Gods.

Which is great, but what happens when it breaks? The Shimano approach to high-end shifters dictates that when one of their offerings goes belly up, you shouldn't have the option of fixing it. No, shamed by its failure, company policy requires that a broken Shimano shifter must commit hari-kiri. Honorable, yes; but expensive, especially you are looking for some 8 or 9-speed love on what is now a 10-speed planet. Campagnolites, on the other hand, proudly point to the fact that their shifters go all the way up to 10 speeds and are rebuildable, thus making them immortal, like the Gods of Cycling that created them.

Of course you can't help thinking, "Yes, they are rebuildable, but heaven help you if you actually need to rebuild it." The thought of tearing into something as mechanically sophisticated (and expensive) as a Chorus or Record shifter is enough to give most owners and bike shops the vapors. Because just as Prometheus was punished by Zeus for stealing fire from Mount Olympus and giving it to mere mortals for their use, it is a verity among the cycling cognoscenti that attempting to rebuild a highly-sophisticated Campy Ergo shifter is the eternal retribution inflicted by the Gods upon us mortals for having presumed to grasp at cycling perfection.

And the cognoscenti would be wrong.My friend Karl appeared on my doorstep the other day seeking help to revive the newly-defunct Campy Chorus shifters that are attached to his Motobecane. Having spent several years toiling without complaint buried in Karl's meaty grip, the right shifter decided to take a holiday. Karl had of course taken the usual steps of attempting to appease the angry Shifting Gods - most notably smearing himself with dung and making a sacrifice of an old Regina freewheel on a pyre of blazing of TriFlow chain lube - but to no avail. Looking utterly bereft at his loss, I took Karl and his bike back to my shop. Putting his bike up on the workstand, I poked and prodded and muttered darkly about "G-Springs" and "Ratchet Pawls." I was doing this mostly for Karl's benefit, because I knew that he was still smarting a bit about the added cost of having ordered his bike with Campagnolo components. The fact that his hard-earned money had purchased a drool-worthy marvel of mechanical intrigue worthy of a Machiavelli had eased the pain somewhat. This was clearly not a good time for him to learn the Awful Truth about Ergo shifters. So having completed the requisite obscure rituals, I sent Karl away and got down to the task of rebuilding his shifter.

Step one: close the shop door, making sure that no Shimano owners are about. Step two: peel back the rubber hood. Step three: undo one screw and two cables. The shifter is now off the bike and sitting in your hand. Step four: flip the shifter over and remove the little trap door at the back to reveal the Awful Truth. The Awful Truth about Campagnolo shifters is this: there are no cascades of finely-machined gears or high tech carbon fiber gubbins residing in the back of a stupifyingly expensive Record or Chorus shifter. That carefully-crafted image of cutting-edge sophistication is pure bunk: what you see beneath that sleek, sexy carbon fiber body is what you'd expect to find if you opened a wind-up alarm clock with a hammer; springs and ratchets seemingly thrown together at random. For the uninitiated, it's like that moment in the Wizard of Oz where the curtain is pulled back to reveal that the Mighty Oz is nothing but a middle aged hack with a paunch, thinning hair, and a bum knee. One look through the little trap door in the back and gone are all of the mental images of jewel-like precision or white-suited technicians using robots to assemble Record Shifters to aerospace standards in a sterile environment. No, the Awful Truth about Ergo shifters is that the aura and mystique that feeds the cult-like devotion of the Campy faithful is founded on something that is more Rube Goldberg than Rolex.

But while Ergo shifters may not be marvels of technology, the good news in all of this is that they work well and turn out to be relatively simple devices that can be fixed by idiots like me with nothing more than some twigs, spit, and a rusty nail. No exotic tools or special training is needed; just a good look at the parts diagram and a nice Italian espresso should see you through. And, indeed, after a few minutes of fiddling I had Karl's shifter back in operating order. Job complete, I quietly opened the door to the shop, checking to make sure that no one who was not already privy to the Awful Truth saw me working on Karl's bike.There is one final step in fixing a Campy Ergo shifter: giving it back to its owner. Here, the clever mechanic can use the power of the Campagnolo mystique to impose random demands, limited only by your own capriciousness, all in the name of proper "maintenance."

"So, what was wrong with my shif..."

"You're not listening to Italian opera, are you?"

"What?"

"I said, you're not listening to any Italian opera at home, are you?"

"Opera? Dude, I play the tuba in the Navy band. I listen to Sousa marches and stuff like that."

"Well DAMN, no wonder the shifter crapped out. You did read the manual, didn't you?"

"Well....no."

"You need to play two hours of Italian opera every night or the shifters get homesick. The carbon fiber models require something light, like Verdi. Preferably an early Parlophone or Edison recording with Caruso. I also noticed that the shifter pawls were a little dry. You are soaking your riding gloves in olive oil before every ride, right?"

"Soak my gloves in olive oil...?"

"Boy you really didn't read the manual, did you? Soaking your riding gloves in extra virgin olive oil lubes the shifters as you ride. It cuts internal wear on the ratchet pawls in half. It has to be extra virgin oil, though. Otherwise it just gunks things up and you are right back at square one."

"Uhhhh....okay. Do you have to do this with Shimano shifters?"

"No, but that's why you just throw them away when they break. Campy shifters never die -- they are rebuildable. Isn't that great?"

Yes, isn't that great.As I said, I like working on Campy Ergo shifters. I like knowing the Awful Truth. And I really, really like the fact that, thanks to me, Karl now spends quiet evenings at home making a nice, light pasta sauce from his old cycling gloves while serenading his bike with the Barber of Seville...