Ciclismo Classico Annual Guide Meeting

What is it like spending four days talking, learning, eating and cycling
with 28 Ciclismo Classico guides?

How about inspiring, crazy, engaging, fun, interesting, warm and intense? Each year I spend several days in Tuscany with our guide team, bonding, learning and sharing new ideas as well as best guide practices. Oh yes there are always fun and games like when Paolo Taberetti (we call each other cugini since he is from Fano, the town that my grandfather was born) and Simone Scalas showed me how to play the Italian "Morra" ( a hand game, involves strategy, tactics and energy brought to Italy in the 16th century from Turkey).

Outside of my own crazy family, there is no group of people I feel more akin with and amazingly proud of than this wonderful group of super talented, affectionate and passionate Ciclismo guides.

This year our meeting was based at beautiful La Fattoria degli Usignoli, one of most popular hotels panoramically perched in the hills near Regello in the Pratomagno. Not only are our guides talented but also they are super loyal to Ciclismo, many have been with us 8 years or more. Almost every region of Italy was represented at this guide reunion­­ Tuscany, Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardia, Abruzzo, Tuscany, Lombardia, Reggio Emiglia [Emilia Romagna], Sicilia, Sardegna and my family's origins: Le Marche. I love hearing their distinct regional accents
and the way they playfully make fun of each other. There were also four Americans, Irish and Spanish guide to round off our team.

In addition to learning and sharing, this gang is like a one big family who really knows how to have fun. They tease, hug, laugh, yell, and share pictures, stories, jokes and most of all they share a bottomless wild passion for what they do. On Saturday morning we all took a bike ride along the "mitico" Strada dei Setti Ponte to Castellfranco where we piled into a small café for a ritual and one of the many "Sosta di Café" (coffee break).

Running the show this year was European Manager, Davide Marchegiano, Italian base manager Suzie Regul and the one and only Paolo Nicolosi "della Sicilia" who with his affectionate commands of "CAFÉ" and "A TAVOLA", made sure that we got a steady stream of coffee and three delicious four course meals. No meeting has better food for sure! Andi Nufer, Suzie's right hand gal, was busy trying to take meeting notes while interpreting wild gesticulations, Italian sarcasm and linguistic regional nuances.

In addition to amazing native guides, what differentiates Ciclismo Classico from other operators is our dedication to making every guest a better cyclist. Quality coaching requires teaching from the best such as Super athlete and new papa' Marcello Bonino [Bonini] who gave an EXCELLENT cycling skills clinic session. Colorado native, Italian import and Campagnolo devotee, Franco Yantorno (one of the best mechanics on the planet) gave a four-hour session on how to fit and fix almost everything on a bicycle. My new general manager Stephen Lang and controller Scott Robertson were there to witness the passion play up close; they were amazed as I always am with this amazing group of talent.

Are you joining us on a tour in Italy and have some extra post tour travel time? Are you traveling on your own to Italy and wish to have a very unique experience? Would you like to really get up close and behind the scenes of the Italian culture? If so I highly recommend that you hire one of our SUPER knowledgeable guides for a very special and 1-2 day private walking or driving tour. Our guides are also full of unique ideas for private tours and are willing and ready to put together a one-of-a-kind custom tour for you and your friends. Feel free to contact me and I can help match you with one of our Ciclismo Classico guides

Women Cross Country Ski Day Slide Show

Into the Wild: A Fatal Voyage of Self Discovery

For those of you who, like me who have put "simplify and declutter" life into your list of New Year's resolutions, after seeing Sean Penn's movie, Into the Wild, you may be inspired to clear out more than closets. You may want to, like protagonist Christopher J. McCandless, choose to reinvent yourself. Based on the best selling book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the movie perfectly captured the intense spiritual journey of determined and driven young man.

Into the Wild tells the adventures of Christopher McCandless, a top student at Emory University and an athlete. After graduating, McCandless decides to give his entire $24,000 savings account to OXFAM and burn all the money in his wallet. He hitchhikes all the way to Alaska to live in the wild, bringing only a .22 caliber rifle, a camera, several boxes of rifle rounds, some camping gear, and a small selection of literature—including a field guide to the region's edible plants, Tana'ina Plantlore. During his adventure, he encounters several unique people that change his life before he faces the dangers of wilderness.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 4 stars out of 4 and described the film as "spellbinding." Ebert wrote that Emile Hirsch gives a "hypnotic performance", saying "It is great acting, and more than acting." Ebert said "The movie is so good partly because it means so much, I think, to its writer-director.", Sean Penn.^[4]

While his Alaskan experience in an old bus is reminiscent of Jack London's Call of the Wild his journey getting to Alaska is ripe wonderful human spirit and the yearning for family and connectedness such as the heartwarming encounter with an Ron Franz, an aging widower who sees in Chris his own lost dream and the son for who he yearns. His journey to Alaska reveals his "rebirth" into a new manhood, one that is rooted in raw nature.

Having hiked in Peru for six weeks and bicycled solo around Europe for three, I connected to Chris's profound feeling of total freedom of being out on the road with just what you carry on your back. It is one of the most liberating feelings I have ever experienced and this film only made the yearning stronger. My daughter and I talk of a cross country bike trip but until she is old enough we'll be content with NE.

The gorgeous scenery that fills the screen is reason enough to see this amazing film. From a NY times review: "What he mostly saw was the glory of the North American landscape west of the Mississippi: the ancient woodlands of the Pacific Northwest, the canyons and deserts farther south, the wheat fields of the northern prairie and Alaska, a place that Mr. McCandless seemed to regard with almost mystical reverence."

An enthusiastic reader, Chris has his own unique spiritualism that is inspired by Thoreau, Toylstoy and Jack London. Had Chris survived, he might now be regarded like a modern day Edward Abby. Some inspiring quotes from the movie:

There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and the music in its roar;
I love not man the less, but Nature more."
— Lord Byron

"Rather than Love, than Money, than Fame, give me Truth."
— Henry David Thoreau

"It should not be denied... that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led West."
— Wallace Stegner

Now on to those closets!

Everett Potter Interviews BICI PAZZA for his monthly Travel Report

I am honored to have been interviewed by Everett Potter, one of the country's finest travel writers is his Everett Potter’s Travel Report.

Everett Potter is a columnist for USA Weekend magazine, which is distributed to more than 600 newspapers and has 23 million readers. He is a contributing editor for Ski, a contributing editor to Luxury Spa Finder, and a monthly columnist for both Diversion and Laptop magazines. Potter is a frequent contributor to National Geographic Traveler, ForbesTraveler.com and Forbes Life.

His writing has appeared in a variety of other publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Conde Nast Traveler, Conde Nast Traveller UK, Outside, Elle Decor, Centurion, Bride's, National Geographic Adventure, Food & Wine, Aspen Magazine, Metropolitan Home, Manhattan inc., Delta Sky and Town & Country. From 1988 through 2005, Potter authored a weekly, nationally syndicated column that was distributed by The New York Times Syndicate. From 1993 to 1997, he was the first contributing editor for travel to SmartMoney: The Wall Street Journal Magazine of Personal Business.

Potter has made guest appearances on NBC's Today Show, CNN, CNBC, CBS, Fox, Bloomberg Radio and NPR's All Thing Considered.

Enjoy the interview and his wonderfully informative BLOG. Happy Travels. Lauren