A Classic Celeste Bianchi

A lot of geezers like me still love our bicycles.  Yeah, we like our motorcycles, fast cars, big trucks, motorcycles, and guns…but a bicycle was our first taste of freedom.  You could just get on them and go, it was the first way we could explore the world, and those distant decades-old memories are reignited every time we clip in.

My first bike was an old green and cream balloon tired Schwinn my old man picked up for cheap.  It was too big for me initially, but I grew into it.  Then he bought me a brand new candy apple red and chome Schwinn Jaguar, another balloon tired, white walled anchor that I positively loved. I bought a Cadet speedometer and pedaled 2873 miles around New Jersey one summer when I was a pimply preteen, loving every second of it.  On one downhill stretch, the Cadet indicated 45 miles per hour, all gravity based (I couldn’t pedal nearly that fast on the single-speed Schwinn).

It was grand, but what I really wanted was a 10-speed, and to be specific, my fantasies focused on a yellow Schwinn Varsity.  A tank by today’s standards, but it was the subject of my dreams in the late ’50s.  With their 10 speeds, the myth was that you could hit 60 miles per hour on level ground (no one could, but believing the myth made for delightful dreams…a freeway-capable bicycle, before freeways even existed).

Fast forward six decades, sprinkled with an addiction to watching Lance dominate in successive Tours de France.  Old age was on the horizon and now it’s here, but I can still ride.  None of us took any pleasure in learning that Lance cheated and indeed, we would have preferred not to know at all.  But the bicycle bug had bitten, and like malaria or leishmaniasis (other bugborne maladies), the disease was incurable.  Gresh wrote of collecting motorcycles; one of my serious afflications is a similar attraction/addiction to multi-geared roadbikes. I never got the Schwinn Varsity, but I’ve more than made up for it since.

One of my prize pieces is the Bianchi Campione you see in that big photo at the top of this blog.  It’s one of my Italian thoroughbreds, made in a time where made in Italy really meant made in Italy (Bianchi frames are made in China today).   You know, Italy.  Where they make Ducatis.  And Ferraris.  And Lamborghinis.

Celeste green, the classic color common to Bianchi bicycles, is itself the subject of substantial and varying mythology.  Post-World-War-II, the only paint the Italian manufacturer could find was OD green, and mixing it with other colors created the celeste of Bianchi fame.  Don’t like that version?  Another holds that it is the color of the Milan sky.  Need more?  How about my favorite, which is that when the Queen of Italy commissioned Edoardo Bianchi to build her bicycle, he painted it to match her eyes.

I saw the Bianchi on a Craigslist ad down in Laguna Niguel, and I was on it that day.  The price was high but reasonable, the bicycle was in impeccable shape even though it was 25 years old when I bought it, and it had interesting accessories (like a color-coordinated frame pump and a stand).  It was a steel-framed classic with classic down-tube shifters.  Two chainrings up front and 7 on the cassette meant it had 14 speeds (less than other roadbikes I already owned but more than the 10-speed Varsity I was still compensating for), and at 55 centimeters the frame was my size.  I was hooked.

I added a few extras to my vintage Campione, like the carbon fiber bottle cage, the celeste green handlebar tape, and the matching Vittoria Rubino 700×23 tires.  With its lugged steel frame (steel is real; it gives the best ride of any frame material) and classy downtube shifters, it drew crowds in the pre-Covid days.  To a great extent, that’s what a big part of this collecting thing is all about…having stuff that both you and other folks admire.

This blog came about as a result of a phone conversation between Gresh and me.  Our discussion followed its normal train-of-free-thought path and I landed on the Bianchi, and Joe suggested it might make for a good blog.  I thought I might have done one on the Bianchi already (we’ve posted nearly 800 blogs here on ExNotes in the last 2  1/2 years), but I checked and I had not.  We may do more bicycle blogs.  Bicycles are a lot of fun.  So is writing about them.  Hopefully, reading about them is, too.

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Do you pedal your butt all over town?  Let’s hear about it.  Please tell us about your adventures here in the Comments section.

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