Ride With A View

One of our favorite events each Spring is L'Eroica...an amateur bike race restricted to classic bicycles built before 1987.  It covers 153 Km (96 miles) over mostly unpaved roads

This year's race was promoted as "Ride with a View."

This morning, the actual view of the Val d'Orcia wasn't quite as advertised.

As the racers pulled into Pienza, it was evident what riding on a rainy morning on dirt roads was like.

And this was only about a quarter of the way through the day's course.

Of course, a glass of red wine...at 9:30 in the morning...makes things more tolerable.




Classic bike collectors came from across Europe for today's race.  We spoke to two Brits and an American who had come down from Geneva to participate.

This was Roger's favorite bike, built before derailleurs were invented by Tullio Campagnolo in the 1930's.



On this bike, you changed gears by removing the rear wheel and turning it around.  It had one gear on each side of the axle, one for the flats and one for climbing hills.


....which there were plenty of.