Back Out of the Saddle

   My return to writing the blog has taken longer than expected, as until very recently, there hadn't been much going on down in the shop or out in the road. It seems for the second year in a row that I'll be starting from scratch, as far as cycling fitness goes. I had a really bad head cold, followed up by a scratchy throat/cough situation around Christmas.

   After I slowly recovered, we were hit with an extended spell of miserable weather, including the area's first real snowfall in two years, so I've had only two outdoor rides of any decent length during the past month. As noted many times, I HATE the indoor trainer but have resorted to a few short sessions just to get the legs spinning, and I've also done a couple hikes on some cold and windy days.

   Sure, there have been plenty of times when I've been feeling antsy, but I've kept busy catching up on some reading, throwing myself back into Italian language lessons, practicing guitar and working on my model railroad (I'm looking to share a bit of that in the spring). I did have a couple wise customers get a jump on the yearly bike shop traffic by bringing their machines in for tune-ups and repairs during the offseason.

   I had also been in touch with my friend Walt about reducing the prices on some of his collection, and we are planning to replace the decals on some of the fantastic framesets that have lost their artwork over the decades he has been accumulating his "stuff". My go-to vintage decal vendor, VeloCals, had unfortunately closed its doors last year, so I've had to investigate some other options for more difficult-to-find bicycle brands.

   The Lazzaretti frameset (which I had actually bought from Walt) was missing its head tube badge, and because I couldn't find a replacement or quality artwork to use for a reproduction, I turned to an online company called Vinyl Disorder to create an excellent-looking badge, using the Lazzaretti store's modern logo:

   I'm having them recreate a head tube badge for the Patelli frame that Walt has listed, using some artwork that was contributed by an eBay seller named "Velobits". In the past I've purchased from him handlebar plugs with vintage logos, as well as bar finishing tape with national flag color stripes. I saw that this seller had some Patelli plugs in stock, and he kindly supplied the logos he had used to produce them:

    The frame decals were from an earlier era than everything I found available online, so I had to contact a guy I found on Facebook named Gus Salmon, who produces custom waterslide decals for bicycles.

   After a detour in the project queue, I also plan to finish up the Battaglin Arenberg Edition bicycle early this spring, in time for the next Paris-Roubaix race, so as a bike restoring colleague says, "Let's get crackin'!"