According to the photos on the Gios web page, my frame was built in 1984. I acquired it in 2013 as a surprise gift from a California friend, Phil Brown, who had been aware that I'd wanted one for years.
In the '70s, my then-girlfriend and I had flown to New England to tour with Vermont Bicycle Touring and ride with the Dorset Training Group, Stan Swaim's (RIP) outfit. While there, I had a chance to ride with David Mayer-Oakes, from Lubbock, Texas, who was training on those quiet New England roads.
DMO had a Gios and a beautiful riding style. Oh my he looked great on a bike. Watching him ride and seeing photos of Roger de Vlaeminck and Fons de Wolf on their Gios bicycles made me lust for one of those Gios blue bikes...but it took decades and Phil Brown's generosity to land one.
The bike arrived and I was sure it was too small. I had shrunk, as I mentioned in my Lighthouse post, but in 2013 I did not realize it. I checked my saddle height, installed a post and seat in the Gios frame and stood back and looked at it. Was too much post showing? Not really... Was the frame really too small?
Maybe not!
I built up the frame with Japanese components after looking at period Campy stuff online. Even considering a no-cost frame, a full-Record bike would cost what I think of as a fortune.
And I am unable these days to ride a friction-shifting bike. Oh, I can ride it and shift it just fine, but I drive my riding friends crazy. I don't align the jockey wheels perfectly under the freewheel cogs. I can't hear the chain clattering.
I got the bike built up with parts from friends all over the US. Earle Young in Madison made me a set of wheels that are still on the bike, 11 years later. A friend from Sacramento sent me a white Silca Impero frame pump. My local bike mechanic gave me a white Concor saddle.
My friend Justin contributed a Dura-Ace rear derailleur, seven-speed indexed shift levers and a set of sweet old sidepull Dura-Ace brakes. And old Berkeley friend sent me a pair of Dura-Ace clip-'n'-strap pedals, good as new.
I bought an ancient Gran Compe seat post, a Nitto stem and handlebar and an old Ultegra crankset.
As the bike went together, I began to think: I've got a l'Eroica bike here. I went online and looked at the dates and the rules. Tamar and I talked it over. We decided to do the retro ride in Tuscany on the famous "white roads," the unpaved roads there, in 2014.
I emailed my friend Ken at the Bisbee Bicycle Brothel, sadly defunct (not Ken, thank God, the Brothel) and asked him to see if he still had my really old Adidas Eddy Merckx leather shoes, shoes with a conventional slotted cleat. By golly he found them and sent them to Denver. They still fit and the cleats were adjusted just fine!
I wrote a series of blog posts a decade ago about our l'Eroica experience. We did that Italy trip clumsily and ruined it for ourselves, I think. We were both sick. I over thought the event and under thought the timing; I was still jet-lagged on the day and no way could I relax and enjoy the ride.
We did have a good time renting an ancient Fiat 500 for a drive out of Florence to the country. What fun! Seventeen horsepower, no synchromesh and urban Italian traffic!
The photo you see is of the Gios in its just-assembled form, before Earle Young sent me the everlasting wheels, before the pedals and shoes arrived...in the winter of 2013-14. The white tape is still pristine!
That saddle now is worn and brown and has many lengthwise cracks in the surface of the leather. The rest of the bike does not look much different, a decade later. I ride SPD pedals. There's a dual-pivot brake caliper on the front for more stopping power, and Modolo brake levers with gum hoods.
I've also put a riser post in the steerer tube and an upwardly slanted "threadless" stem, plus those compact bars.
It's a great bike. I liked descending on it as well as anything I'd ever ridden until I got my Gangl.
The Gios has all those romantic racing associations if you were a fan back when. Those feelings have little to do with the actual riding of the bike but they have value that a mere perfectly constructed titanium bike can't match.
As the ad guys say, it's sizzle, not steak. Nice though!
