Lennard Zinn's Tech Report: Traditions - From Birkie to Bike Shop
This past weekend's trip to the Wisconsin north woods for the 35th Subaru American Birkebeiner (birkie.com), which is for me and many other cyclists and triathletes a festival of extreme winter cross-training, got me thinking about traditions. Being able to count on the recurrence of a tradition is comforting. Yet underneath traditions can be fragile, no matter how long they have thus far endured.
Every year I go to the Birkie and reunite with thousands of cyclists who take to skis in the winter. I can not only count on running into friends from Trek/Bontrager/Gary Fisher/Klein, as well as from many other Wisconsin and Minnesota bike shops and bike distributors, but also people from much further away. Plenty of riders who still do a lot of bike racing but are no longer so intense about it that they have to be on a bike by late February are sure to be there, and I always know that I will find myself lining up at the start with the likes of Ned Overend, Travis Brown, Tom Schuler, Jeff Bradley, Steve Tilford, Dag Selander, or Kent Eriksen, but it is always a surprise who actually shows up each time.
On the other hand, while finishing in front of thousands of cheering fellow skiers densely lining Main Street in Hayward after over 50 kilometers of hard skiing is always sweet, it can hardly be counted upon. In the 13 times I have gone out for the Birkie, four of those times I came away without that experience, since, due to insufficient snow, the race was shortened twice and cancelled twice. I also used to love driving up to the race from Minneapolis with Davis Phinney, but that is something that Parkinson's Disease has taken from him and us. And Ray Browning, a many-time winner of Ironman-distance triathlons, used to drive up with us as well and was even the second highest-placed American one of those times; his priorities have changed now, and he no longer does it either.
Paying attention to climate science these days can scare the bejeesus out of you that we may see winters without snow become the norm in our lifetimes, and now that I'm turning 50, I am especially aware of what a gift it is to have the good health and sufficient opportunity with family and work to ski fast over 50 kilometers of white corduroy! I don't take it for granted, and I count each time skiing that beautiful trail among all of those friendly people as particularly precious.
So in thinking about traditions and how much longer many of them have endured in other countries than in our relatively young one, I started thinking about cycling tradition-rich Italy, and, in particular, in Italy's largest northern city, Milan. Milan is not often associated with being a bike-friendly city in the ilk of, say, Amsterdam, but you would be surprised how many bikes crowd the streets there at rush hour, even on rainy days. And if you start looking at those bikes, you will start noticing a preponderance of a certain characteristic black city bike with upright handlebars, fenders, chain guard, front and rear racks, U-shaped kickstand, generator-driven head- and taillights, and three-speed hub with the name "Rossignoli" spelled out on its thin down tube.
Things are undoubtedly different now for kids, but through most of the past century, a bicycle was traditionally the first big purchase for a kid. The kid's father traditionally made the purchase, and it was an emotional decision based on his own childhood and his experience in getting and riding his first bicycle and subsequent bicycles. In Milan, chances are that the father will make that purchase in the Rossignoli bike shop because his father, his father's father, and even fathers yet further back down the line bought their kids' bikes there. That's because the Rossignoli bike shop was founded in 1900 and has been in the same location, on Corso Garibaldi, since 1926!
Renato Rossignoli and his brother and sister are the fourth generation of their family to take care of the cycling needs of the Milanese. And don't look for much change here, but count on tradition. As Rossignoli family members have done for 108 years, Renato and his siblings pay the same attention to detail and customer needs on a city bike that costs 200 Euros as other shops would only with an expensive racing bike. The parts are not selected because they are cheap but because they will do the job, will hold up to the rigors of life as a beast of burden on busy streets that are often cobblestone, will be easy to find parts for, and will be serviceable.
A Rossignoli's front and rear racks are not cheap "lunch smashers;" they are heavy-duty integrated units. The kickstand does not require the bike to lean over, a dicey proposition with a heavily loaded bike. Rather, it lifts the rear wheel and holds the bike securely and straight up. The pedals are durable and offer grip with both street shoes and high heels.
Rossignoli has also always been the place in town where cyclists knew that there would be compressed air and a pressure gauge available free of charge to everyone. And that compressor continues to be the same type seen in bike shops all over Italy, namely a black compressor and tank recycled out of an old refrigerator! Same thing with bike repair stands - don't be looking for the latest Park or Tacx stand when the heavy steel unit bolted to the floor has worked there for almost a century.
Rossignolis are everywhere in Milan, and while they are usually black, there are a number of yellow and red ones to be seen as well. Milanese often have bicycles at their vacation homes, and there is of course only one place they would think of shopping for it. So if you find a Rossignoli bike, you can count on someone from Milan being nearby.
It's one thing to do something of quality once or for a few years. It's an entirely different thing to do the same thing continuously, always maintaining the highest standards, for over a century. We can all take comfort in traditions that endure, despite their inherent fragility.
*All photos by Alberto Anderloni
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Technical writer Lennard Zinn is a frame builder (www.zinncycles.com), a former U.S. national team rider and author of numerous books on bikes and bike maintenance including Zinn and the Art of Triathlon Bikes(http://www.velogear.com/prodinfo.asp?number=VP+ZTM) and the pair of successful maintenance guidesZinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance (http://www.zinncycles.com/books.aspx?book=mountainbike)- now available also on DVD (http://www.zinncycles.com/video.aspx), and Zinn and the Art of Road Bike Maintenance (http://www.zinncycles.com/books.aspx?book=roadbike), as well as Zinn's Cycling Primer: Maintenance Tips and Skill Building for Cyclists(http://www.zinncycles.com/books.aspx?book=primer).
Zinn's regular column is devoted to addressing readers' technical questions about bikes, their care and feeding and how we as riders can use them as comfortably and efficiently as possible. Readers can send brief technical questions directly to Zinn. Zinn's column appears here each Thursday
