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I’ve been obsessed with cycling, bikes and parts ever since my childhood friend Greg extolled the virtues of Super Record and his father’s gold chrome Medici Pro Strada. Cute bike; Campagnolo, Cinelli, 19 pounds, but it wasn’t truly Italian. Around the same time, I also discovered Celeste… At the time, Pinarello Gios and Mercks were all better bikes, but nothing looked as sexy and nothing was as cool as a Celeste Bianchi. I pleaded my father for a Superleggera for the following two years, and when summer of 1985 came around, fed up with all the Superleggera and Campagnolo dinner talk he bought me the next (next) best thing: a Bianchi Veloce with Campagnolo… Triomphe. Superleggera it was not, and not a Super Record part in sight, but it was decked out with a new generation of campy no one had ever seen and it was of course… Celeste. Even with all it’s shortcomings (no chrome anywhere and Gipiemme dropouts with (gasp) fender eyelets!), I rode that bike like I was Greg Lemond. Over the years, I upgraded everything I could to C-Record (because by 1986 you know, Super Record had become sooooo yesterday) and simi-chromed all dropouts to make them shine like chrome. I’m still changing parts on it to this day finally replacing that hideous Triomphe crank. I raced it for several years and even did my first century on it, but my dreams of a Superleggera never faded, not even 30 years later.