World's Greatest Pedal Boat

Dual pedal input. Bonus water slide.




Seafaring no less. Spotted in Otranto, Italy. Adriatic in the background.

Rackses

Some interesting bike racks:

Nice use of a scooter rack trunk on this generic rodbraked city bike:

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There were a few nice motobecane city bikes floading around, this one had a very sturdy looking front rack:

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Finally, all fantasies of "il postino" should be squashed in this part of italy. A whole mess of post "bikes" with really nice looking front racks:


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Coffee and Deisel

Some anonymous commenter complains I said nothing of coffee in Italy. I reiterate it was cheap and it was good and it came in little thick espresso cups often with a tiny glass of lemon soda water, yum. The cappuchinos were hit or miss, I think the standard coffee bar was a bit too hurried to heat the milk enough and they often used Parmalac type no refrig neeeded milk, so feh on those. The espresso's were 100% good even when they were using preground suspiciously folgers like coffee from cans. I am proud to say though, that using my pavoni at home I can replicate or exceed the italian espresso's often. I wish my digicam worked past day one, else I would have had pictures of the bewildering array of beautiful industrial espresso machines in the bars and resturaunts, some were easily older than me.


click for big, I am pretty sure I saw no blond nor asian italian women.

Commenter also said the fiat 500's did not run on deisel. Really? I just assumed everything was deisel and that was pretty much all you could get, but I was not paying too much attention. The car I really want them to sell in the US is the VW Polo wagon in TDI flavor.



I wasunsuccessful capturing the chaos of scooters swamping car traffic at rush hour, here was the closest:

Coppini

A nice beat coppini city bike. The head tube badge said:
Enzo Coppini
Prato
Cicli
Campiona Italiano
Cyclo Tourism 1973

I need to figure out how to become Italian Cyclotourism champion when I grow up.

Sorry for the grainy phots, the new digcam decided to die on day one of vacation, so I resorted to disposal cameras for the rest of the week.

Ciao bella

She claimed I only wanted to take her picture because of her bike.


Well it was a really really nice looking chain cased generatored Raleigh Bike. Pristene even. I think it was the only english bike I saw in sorrento.

Alot of the employees and proprietors in the shops in the narrow old section of sorrento had their bikes stashed in the back of their shop. The woman above, judging from where her bike was parked, worked at the "Pinko" store that sold the ubiquitous self labled Pinko Bags, probably il modo or something similar that is beyond my comprehension. I do get bikes though, and she had a winner.

The sorrento area though, as I suspect true for much of italy, is not about the bike, it is about the diesel fumes. I was high on the fumes of a million poorly tuned two stroke engines clogging the streets. It is a bad high, yet clashes pleasantly with the local white wines. I usually hate cars and scooters, especially hipsters riding smoke belching vespas, but when nearer to Rome than I have ever been before, one must do as the near Romans. Thus my number one favorite diesel fume emitter:


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In the big picture you can see the mighty Fiat 500, conveyance to la gente, dwarfed by a VW Polo (a smaller VW Golf).

More Pon

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See the nice little paint missing on the top of the fork legs showing the front end collision. Mmmm steelicious. Nice headbadge too. Ponpon.

Looking at yesterdays pics you can calculate the head tube and seat tube angle using the maths to be something like 61 degrees, maybe a bit steeper if you subtract out the slackening due to the fork being bent back a bit. But still that is mighty slack.

Italy bike week

Spent a week in sorrento near naples in Italy for a conference. Took some bike pics, thus it is italian bike week. Woo.

Bikes were a mix of italian, french and dutch city bikes as well as lugged italian steel road machines with city bars and a few modern crappy MTB commuters and electric bikes.

Start with an old Dutch Pon bike, with a nice front end collision perhaps. Note the insanely slack HT angle.


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More more more this week.

Best thing about italy

If you order an espresso standing at the bar, they are gov't mandated to be 0.70 euro, with a macchiato costing the same.

More pics later if I figure out my camera meltdown issue. Including nice italian classic steel roadies citified.