Bags and bikes

 When younger my bikes usually lacked a bag (and a bottle, and a puncture repair kit, and tools, and…..) but nowadays my bikes always have a bag attached. More of a pouch, when Italian thoroughbreds were my thing.

 

My pouchless Gios. It used to have a Gios-branded one. Where id it go?

The Gios used to belong to Josep Jufre, from his time at Relax-GAM. He came 14^th at the 2005 Vuelta riding a Gios. Not sure if it was this one, this may have been his training bike. Jufre went on to be a domestique for Cadel Evans at Lotto and finished his career at Astana. I came into possession of the bike via my grandfather in-law. For many a year he acted as a mentor to up and coming Catalan cyclists from the Osona region. Jufre and Melcior Mauri (winner of the Vuelta in 1991) the most notable. At 99, he’s still going strong (good genes – his siblings all made it past 100, his sister dying in a car crash rather than natural causes).

 

Shades, always shades. Rain or shine; indoors or outdoors.

He’s had quite a life. His teenage years saw a civil war, then thirty odd years of a dictatorship that outlawed his mother tongue. Most of his working life was spent running the village garage. All vehicles – cars, vans, motorbikes – dealt with but bicycles were, and still are, his greatest love. New parts were sourced over the border in tax-free Andorra. He’d head over on a motorcycle, the village priest as passenger. Items bought were stowed within the priest’s cassock, and on return border officials would wave them through, unchecked. Needless to say, a suitable donation was made at the next Mass.

Saddle to bar, something of a drop. I was younger.

Flipping heck, that saddle-to-bar drop, the width (lack of) of those tyres. I used to knock out centuries on that bike. Younger, I guess. It lives on the garage wall now, unridden. But I can’t face getting rid. Many great experiences were had on it, and the Record groupset is an all-time favourite. Have Campagnolo ever been as good since mid-noughties 10 speed? I did shift it through the gears the other day – flawless.

I sometimes ride with just a pouch now but my bags are often wider (as am I, in all directions). Sometimes they’re at the rear.

 

Sometimes at the front.

Other times, all over the bike.

 

But always a bag.