# Gente Veloce ## Posts - [Day 1](https://www.genteveloce.com/day-1/): Day 1, ride 1 is in the books. I had to lube the chain before I could clip in. It had some surface rust on it, not terrible, but that is the kind of chain that leaves you stranded when it is most convenient for IT. I worked some Muc-Off into it, pumped the tires up with the BV floor pump, and opened Zwift. The pump inflates both presta and schrader valves. Unscrew the end, flip it, screw it back on. Simple enough that I don't know why every pump doesn't work that way. The ride I spun at about 80 […] - [Bike Torque Wrench: Why Every Carbon Fiber Bike Desperately Needs One](https://www.genteveloce.com/carbon-fiber-bike-torque-wrench/): My Trek Domane SL has been on an indoor trainer for three years. I rode it indoors occasionally, mostly on Zwift, until even that stopped. It has been collecting dust ever since. When I decided to get it ready to ride again, the first thing I did was reach for my bike torque wrench. Not because I suspected anything was wrong. Because that is what you do with a carbon fiber bike. Some of the fasteners were off spec. A bike that had not been ridden outdoors in three years, that had spent most of its life in a basement. Off […] - [Paris-Nice and the Itch](https://www.genteveloce.com/paris-nice-and-the-itch/): I used to watch every mile. Paris-Nice, the Hell of the North, Flanders and The Grand Tours. I subscribed to NBCSN specifically for it and I would sit there for hours. Every breakaway. Every descent. Every moment where everything could go sideways with a little rain on a corner. My favorite was the lone rider off the front at kilometer one, just grinding away while the peloton let him go. They always let him go. The question was never if they would catch him. It was when. And whether he had enough of a gap to survive. I knew the teams. […] - [The Domane, and What COVID Took](https://www.genteveloce.com/the-domane-and-what-covid-took/): I sold the cyclocross bike to a kid going to Phoenix and went back to riding the crit frame. It's a fun bike, quick, responsive, the kind of bike that reminds you why you started racing in the first place. But it was a placeholder and I knew it. The trails had put me back on the roads, and the roads had put a new problem in front of me. People on roads are distracted. Some of them, for reasons I have never fully understood, actively hate cyclists. I ended up buying a Garmin Varia RTL510, a rear radar that tells […] - [The Cyclocross Bike](https://www.genteveloce.com/the-cyclocross-bike/): The Pumpkinvine Trail was expanding. For those who don't know it, and I'll write a proper love letter to the Pumpkinvine another time because it deserves one, it's a rails-to-trails project that follows an old train route from Goshen to Middlebury and back. 26.3 miles. Some called it a highway for the Amish, and that's not wrong. It's one of the best pieces of riding infrastructure in Indiana and I put somewhere north of 4,000 miles on it over the years. But at that time they were still expanding, and a lot of the newer sections were gravel and cinder rather […] - [The Cannondale Crit Frame](https://www.genteveloce.com/the-cannondale-crit-frame/): I found it on eBay. A used Cannondale crit frame, red, 105 components. The seller was in Atlanta. We went back and forth on the details the way you do with a stranger on the internet who has something you want. He was a careful guy, thorough in his description, clearly someone who had taken care of the bike. His one concern, the thing he kept coming back to, was whether I'd be able to reassemble it after shipping. He wanted to take it apart to fit it in a reasonable box. He was worried I wouldn't know what to do […] - [The China Bike](https://www.genteveloce.com/the-china-bike/): There is a certain kind of decision that makes complete sense in the moment and reveals itself as deeply misguided almost immediately. Buying the China Bike was that kind of decision. It was 2012 or so. I had been married eight years, working a desk job, drinking good beers with some regularity, and somewhere in all of that I had gotten to 235 pounds on a 6-foot frame. I had also just quit smoking, which meant I was itchy in the specific way that only former smokers understand: restless, needing something to do with my hands and my energy and my […] - [The Schwinn](https://www.genteveloce.com/the-schwinn/): I saved all summer for it. I was 16, landscaping in the Indiana heat, and every dollar went toward one thing: a 1987 Schwinn in Winter Mint. When I finally brought it home I stood in the driveway and just looked at it for a while. I had never owned anything that beautiful in my life. Laura's brothers rode. Serious riders, the kind who drove to find actual hills on weekends because northern Indiana doesn't offer much in that department. When they saw I was committed they gave me my first kit, a Greg LeMond kit, the year before he won […] - [The Road Back, Day One.](https://www.genteveloce.com/the-road-back-day-one/): I haven't ridden yet. But I went down to the basement today and looked at the bike. That counts for something. It's a Trek Domane SL, Ultegra components, which I upgraded to from 105 and still wish I hadn't. There is nothing wrong with Ultegra. There is something right about 105 that I can't fully explain and probably never will. It's on the indoor trainer, in front of a broken TV I used to use for Zwift. The tires are flat. The chain needs attention. My shoes are on the floor next to it with the socks still in them from […] ## Pages - [Contact](https://www.genteveloce.com/contact/): The best way to reach me is by email. Scott@GenteVeloce.com - [Start Here](https://www.genteveloce.com/start-here/): So, Yeah. I Ride. I started riding because of a girl. The Schwinn My high school sweetheart had two brothers who rode, and they took me in. After I spent an entire summer landscaping to buy my first real bike, a 1987 Schwinn in Winter Mint, they gave me my first kit. That bike was beautiful. I loved it more than anything I had ever owned. I rode from Nappanee to Plymouth almost every day the weather allowed. Thirty miles each way, to see her. On weekends the brothers would pick me up and we'd drive to parts of Indiana that […] ## Optional - [Agent (MCP protocol)](websites-agents.hostinger.com/www.genteveloce.com/mcp) [comment]: # (Generated by Hostinger Tools Plugin)