Weather in Piemonte is getting colder and it's raining almost daily... soon the show will be here.
Since the tyres on my car were a little low on tread, I decided to buy a set of winter tyres. After a quick tour on the Internet and a short talk with my local tyre guy, I opted for Pirelli's Sottozero Serie2.
The driving feel is good, and they're rated up to 205 km/h... I wasn't planning to exceed that on the snow, anyway.

Stories about how much fun we had on the trails last sunday spread and grew... this sunday, we were not just 3 easy going guys, but we were joined by 6 more, some very competitive and on superlight, carbon-framed XC racing machines.
I like riding with stronger guys, but I also enjoy pretty much being the one who sets the pace, occasionally accelerating on long climbs, getting to the top and stopping there for a while to wait for my riding buddies.
Not this time.
We were still riding 'fun', waiting for slower guys, but the riding pace was much faster than last sunday.
Several times I found myself going all-out, especially on climbs, where my heavier dual-slalom frame, long travel fork and Rohloff hub... but especially my lesser fitness (who am I kidding!) asked for a reality check.
Infact, my long time riding buddy Icio, on a similar bike, was keeping up with the 'world-cup' hardtail guys better than I did. He was also riding on super skinny mud tires (Barro Mud 26x1.70... the woods are perfectly dry,  though) and going crazy fast downhill so, respect.

After 3h of steady riding, on the last climb, Icio and Viberti spun easily away from me. While giving all I had to keep my third-to-the-top spot, I started thinking about my own lightweight XC racing machine (the Silk Ti), sleeping in the garage. Would that have made a difference? Sure. Is that the bike I want to use this time of the year? Better not.

Infact, next sunday I'll take the single-speed and get even more beating, physical and psychological. This is the time of the year I want to enjoy the trails and the subtle pleasure or suffering, with burning legs and burning lungs. There will be a time for racing and being fast... but that will be next year. I also need to remind myself not to be always so competitive.

Now, can you imagine passing some of the geared guys on my singlespeed? That'd be awesome!!

Slow Food, the "non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization" (quoting from their website) was created in Bra, the town where I live, in 1989. Among the various events they organise, there're several 'special' dinners, with controlled food and wines coming from specific geographic areas.
Yesterday evening I partecipated to a 'Pugliese' (Puglia is the 'heel' of Italian 'booth' geographic shape) dinner... very simple food, cooked in a traditional way starting from incredibly fresh ingredients: the result was outstanding. Wines were local, Piemontese, starting with white 'Gavi' (very 'round' flavour, medium bodied), continuing with 'Lepre' (a special Dolcetto, with a passage in wood... the result was too strong -13,5°- for a Dolcetto and not very armonic for me...), peeking with Barolo (Fontanafredda 2004, young but very promising) and ending with sweet Moscato.
The company was good, mtbiker/triathlete Icio and Brembo: nice food, wine and friends, the perfect receipe for a successful dinner.

Yesterday, for the first time, I was worried for Brembo. He crashed so hard on the last descent of our Sunday morning ride that we thought we might have had to carry him back to the civilized world in separate pieces.
We were speeding down a twisty, very steep trail, dead leaves on the ground: I was dealing with a weak rear brake (some traces of lubricant on the rotor for sure) and doing most of my braking up front, so I already had my share of difficulties. Brembo was following a little distanced, and Aldo (a friend from the swim classes) just behind him. As I reached the bottom I heard a loud noise of breaking branches, looked up and saw Brembo's bike still, trapped between two trees, while Brembo the man was sliding down, head first, on his right shoulder.


Aldo, who had wisely decided to go around trees instead of ramming through them,  was the first to reach Brembo, who was laying motionless on the ground, cursing (which was a good sign).  Aldo helped him to sit down, as I was running up to see what had happened. The consequences were, at the end, just some bruises (on a tree) and a bent chainring. We took it easy on the last trails, slow enough to fully enjoy the nice scenary around us. Autumn is a season of wonderful colours, and dead leaves provide a soft enough landing to crazy bikers.

Finally, I'm free from Aruba's blog platform and its several bugs and malfunctioning. I downloaded dBlog (free of charge and working well!), FTP'd to my website and now I'm again ready to go.
A very quick list of what happended to me while fighting with the bad services of my previous blog provider:
- I got an incredibly bad air-conditioning stroke in Las Vegas, I don't recall being so sick since I was a kid. I'm still not 100% recovered;
- I joined again the master swimming classes, 1 month after the other guys had started to train, and my first lesson was exactly when they started to get serious and swim wearing a cotton t-shirt... PURE suffering. Today is my second time;
- I've not being cycling for ages (several reasons, any of them particularly pleasant) but sunday... sunday it' will be "tapascion's season" first mountain bike ride. We ride, do stupid things, crash, have fun. The essence of mountain biking.

Interbike 2008 was great for Effetto Mariposa and Cantitoeroad.com.

The booth was small but we had all we needed, including nacho chips and burning hot red chili dip to get the kick we needed around the end of the day (I brought some salsa back home, I'm not sure it will replace my post-lunch Espresso, though).

The Giustaforza torque wrench was (still) a show-stopper, as well as the 'BioFloat' seatpost invented by Tom Petrie, founder of Cantitoe and industry veteran (you see the post here: http://cantitoeroad.com/index.php/news/15/66/The-Cantitoe-Road-BioFloatTM-Seatpost.php).

I didn't do as many demo as I thought cutting carbon tubes with Carbocut hacksaw (I spent most of my time talking), but the interest was high and I enjoyed getting first-hand feed-back from so many bicycle shops.

For the kind of entertainment I'm after, Las Vegas is surely the worst place: you can find nice restaurants and good food, but outdoor activities into town are limited to early morning jogging on the Strip (I did it twice this year, and I was already bored), you can't walk without being insistently offered 'invitations' to call girl shows and the most remarkable monuments are hotels (how strange is that?).

And then gambling... as a very successful Industry member told me, he doesn't find any excitement in gambling: self-employed people are risking all they have every day to make their business progress and compared to that gambling is for amateurs. Good point!