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.

In the times I was still working for Vittoria, there was a certain pleasure when I heard my collegues complaining about the bad weather in Madone (East of Milan) and I was in my sunny home-office in Bra. The fact I was working from home was already very positive, but very often the weather in Piemonte was much nicer than that in Lombardia, thanks to the protection of Alps (I guess). Well, it seems the Alps are now preventing the bad weather from leaving: we've had almost two weeks of rain, and it's likely to continue like that next week too. The cycling season has been stopped in the middle, and all the cyclists I know are quite depressed (while the cycling shop owners are cursing like mad, their business is completely frozen). Since my torque-wrench warehouse is just in front of my bicycle garage, when I finish the daily shipments I take a moment to say hello to the bikes: a road Pegoretti, a triathlon Guru, plus 5 mtbs (an XC Nicolai full suspension, a do-everything DaBomb, a Kona singlespeed 29", an aluminum XC front that I'm trying to sell, and a Castellano Silk-ti dual that I'm putting together). That's a lot of bicycles for one person, but I make sure I ride each at least once along the year (with a mere 7 rides, that confirms the weak theory that I need them all). A quick glance at the toys.