Our pal Roland is still in Berlin, enslaved by The Man. As such, we don’t get to see him too often in NYC, so we decided to pay him a visit in the city of his exile.
We met on a Saturday at Pasculli bikes. It’s a cavernous, polished space, featuring a lot of very beautiful bikes in colors that make you want to collect their frames. There is a small showing of photos by the great Timm Kolln (a local), and a stage at one end. Every now and then the bikes get put aside, and the platform is occupied by members of the Berlin Philharmonic (for example).
As I was told by Pasculli finance-guy Andreas- in a well formed presentation it sounded as though he’d given many times- one of the co-founders of the Pasculli is a musician (as well as cyclist); an oboist. The brand is named for Antonio Pasculli- “The Paganini of the oboe”. They’d found a manufacturer in Milan to custom make frames in all the fashionable materials, and so the whole Italian schtick came together, even though they are in Deutchland. The spiel went something like that. Perhaps I should have taken notes, and not so many pictures. I figured I could just look it up later, somewhere on the internets.
Roland had arranged for me to borrow a team bike. Andreas put me into a team jersey as well, so I could match the bike, and so Herr Freund and I could match each other. Very important.
With transport and sartorial matters under control, we hit the road.
We rode west, through the Grunewald and out of the city towards Potsdam, passing over the bridge where prisoners were once exchanged between east and west.
We had this in mind, of course, as we headed into the countryside:
But what we got was this:
Which may explain why I brought my ski goggles to Berlin, and not my helmet.
The bike rode beautifully. Was it the frame? Or the German roads Roland used to go on about as we pounded over the greater New York area’s finer potholes? Whichever. The riding was a pleasure, even if it was pancake flat.
A big shout out to Napoleon Bonaparte, for planting all those trees (or at least having the idea).
Now: When are they gonna get it together and put up that mountain?
