More wall art

All the Italian bikes I've ridden -save one- have broken.

The Atala was nostalgic to a brief team experience in 1987. Primarily a fixed gear for winter training in recent years, I found a cracked lower head tube lug the other day while cleaning the other bikes I haven't ridden all year.

The trusty winter work horse Scapin, which did me well at Copperopolis during it's single race season, served mostly as a winter bike in California, Washington and Colorado but had one French race appearance at the Grand Prix Lillars. It had a crack around the brazeon guide for the rear brake cable at the front of the top tube, like a loose tooth, for a number of years. I stashed the Scapin in an attic in rural Flanders with a suitcase of clothes and a sleeping bag; never to be retrieved.

My Bianchi; the only bike I was ever paid to ride, fell apart at the head tube AND the bottom bracket much like the rider who starved on it.

The Bottechia Time Trial bike cries of dated technology akin to a DeLorian. Ridden by multiple riders including future champions, it's song ran out and landed with me. Now hanging in the attic with the rest, it's the one bike that is not broken but is completely useless with it's tiny front wheel and 1988 Swatch-watch paint job. Like a leasure suit that is not only out of fashion but long since grown out of in the waist, its fun to look at and think, "That was state of the art?"

A fork blade on the Guerciotti Cyclocross bike severed from the crown like a femur from it's head at the hip joint. The bike disapeared to a new home some years ago with an American made Serotta replacement fork. I still use the fork blade as an extension lever on socket wrenches to loosen super tight bolts. I think the broken blade is more useful than the bike ever was complete.

Next to these beautiful but broken and useless machines in my attic is another collection, one of crutches, canes, a walker and a geriatric portable toilet. Coincidence?