Massimilliano

The Giro d'Italia is on its final week, and what a race it's shaping up to be. Even though I'm not riding much lately, the bike is still a part of me. It's the whole reason I started this blog, as a matter of fact.

My family often makes reference to how many bikes I own, so here's the official story:

When I was a teenager I rode around my village in the Philippines on my Schwinn Caliente (with the revolutionary, at the time, Front Freewheel system), dreaming of cycling glory as an Olympic sprinter. Lest anyone think I was actually in a "village" in the wild, it was a gated community wedged between horrible slums, a sprawling outdoor mall shopping complex and expressways with wicked traffic, the likes I have never seen since leaving the islands. Metro Manila is legendary for its congestion, sprawl, and pollution, and it's no longer a pleasant city (but it sure was fun as a teenager).

When I got back stateside, I bought a Peugeot PH10S with a Maillard "Helicomatic" freewheel, an impressive machine for a 17 year old. I thought I was the dude, what with my esoteric French machine, and considered myself quite the cyclist. Little did I know that there were kids like Greg Lemond and Andy Hampsten on the other side of the country who really were something, and I was nothing. As I got to understand racing, I put on a set of 32 hole Sun hoops with some Avocet baldies and I felt like it was a whole new bike. Pretty soon I was "spinning" and before I knew it I became a full fledged elitist bike snob.

Enter the era of my workhorse ride, my Cilo 600 Aelle. I bought it from a local shop, and shared the tragic memory of the dude who sold me the bike here. It was a great bike, and I logged many miles on it for about 5 years, until I bought a Serotta Nova SL in lieu of an engagement ring for my wife to be. Let's just say she didn't really appreciate that but she stuck with me, a feat of strength that awes me to this day. My Serotta was sweet, but, as my wife so aptly put it, was the "glamour girl" as opposed to the "girl next door" Cilo. And if anyone knows me, girl next door is much more my style. Even hanging a different manufacturer for every component, while gimmicky, didn't really make it as nice a ride as the Cilo. I raced on it for a couple of years and hung it up after I started architecture school. Somewhere in there I joined the mountain bike rage and bought a bright yellow Specialized RockHopper.

While I worked at College Park Bicycles during arch school, I built enough wheels one summer to earn a ride of my choice, and I chose a Specialized StumpJumper FS, a beautiful hardtail that now sits in pieces in my crawlspace, as I had to cannibalize it to build my first cyclocross bike. But I'm jumping ahead. Before I chopped up this MTB, I quit riding altogether for about 13 years.

I got fat.

After designing a house addition for my friend, I entered the carbon fiber realm and was back on a Giant Cadex, then bought a Look KG461, after which I burned more cash on my Eddy Merckx CHM (dream bike since I started reading Winning Magazine), and built an Outback 'cross bike with cannibalized bits until settling on a cheap sweet Raleigh RX1 (not glam) 'cross bike that does the trick. The preceding sentence includes a life change of 30+ lbs weight loss, a far better overall attitude, and loyal patronage of a local business since 2003. Supporting the local shop is what I like to do. The Cadex has become my fixie (built a wheel with a cool ENO eccentric hub to convert the vert dropout into a usable fixed gear machine), which I don't ride nearly enough.

Throughout this entire thread I found that I needed to disabuse myself of the notion that I was any good, as my racing career features no podiums and a scant 3rd place in a training race, among equal amounts of pack finishes and DNF's. So you'll never see my name on any top whatever lists, other than the lower half of BikeReg results listings.

There is a silver lining, though. I discovered that my namesake races for some lower level pro Italian squad and actually gets results. Sometimes he even shows up in CyclingNews, and is quoted, even. In some cases, his team actually depends on his skills. And his name is Massimilliano, to boot. With alliteration like that, what's not to like? And this guy's a true paisan, not some third generation paper tiger like me. I have been tracking this man's results, as it will give me the faint impression that my name can be synonymous with a cycling career, even though the resemblance is non-existent, except for the fact that he has limbs and a head, just like me.

He's not in the Giro d'Italia, this year, though. Even after a concerted effort to "let him ride" before last year's Giro. Pity.