Jobst Brandt on the Passo di Gavia, c. 1970s

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I’ve seen this image before, countless times, and in countless other places. It draws me in. Works every time. It is the Colt 45 of cycling photos. The time and place just floor me. Man. Bike. Mountain. Touring. At one’s leisure. Stop and fire up a coffee? Have a sandwich and check out the view? Now that’s living.

I’d so rather be there than here. (A problem I need to address, it seems.)

It is time to post it.

Click for full size image
Click for full size image

Source: http://lifeinthebikelane.tumblr.com/post/5939252339/poler-jobst-brandt-on-the-passo-di-gavia-c.

Seems fitting after Dirty’s awesome overnight out by Four Peaks. When I was a younger man, long on time and grit, I rode that monster from the parking lot just off 87. Maybe a half-dozen times over the course of three years or so. I think it’s only 19 miles on a dirt road from there to the top parking lot / Four Peaks trail head. But, man, those are some hilly miles.

I haven’t been out there since I rode it with Husky on a rigid bike with 7 spd top mounts. Man, it has been a long time indeed.

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About big jonny

The man, the legend. The guy who started it all back in the Year of Our Lord Beer, 2000, with a couple of pages worth of idiotic ranting hardcoded on some random porn site that would host anything you uploaded, a book called HTML for Dummies (which was completely appropriate), a bad attitude (which hasn’t much changed), and a Dell desktop running Win95 with 64 mgs of ram and a six gig hard drive. Those were the days. Then he went to law school. Go figure. Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

11 Replies to “Jobst Brandt on the Passo di Gavia, c. 1970s”

  1. This site is messing with my head lately. Every time I come on DC, I want to leave my office and hop on a bike for three or four weeks.

    Time to plan a trip, I think.

  2. The weight of RL sux right now, HOINFODAMAN and yet I can’t seem to spend a twenty buckeroos on a local concert or a silly bike movie let alone a planned trip up a Mountain…I’ll just stay chained to my box using the little windows of relief like this site to keep the head above water. life would simpler if we all just fucking rode me thinks

    Thanks

  3. Thanks for this. I rode down that sketchy little path this summer on an mtb tour with a bunch of friends, most of whom knew nothing about the Giro, Hampsten, etc. It was this cyclist’s version of holy ground.

    Skinny or fat tires, go.

  4. …awesome foto & yup, seen it many times & it’s always worth re-perusing…THAT is a cycling road…

    …jobst brandt is riding a ‘peter johnson’ built bicycle…peter & his wife jan, who does the ‘woolistic’ brand wool jerseys, live down in redwood city, here in nor-cal…

    …peter has a collection of more old school campagnolo parts than prob’ly anyone on the planet, including campagnolo themselves…

  5. I’m with D2. The posts have been awesome the last few weeks.

    Awesome and annoying that is. But only cause I’m chained to a fryer at the moment.

  6. @bgw

    Oh yea. Heading in to our busy season at work and stocking up the miles in hopes I can get some serious down time once January comes.

    Now where to go ?

  7. I always wanted to play in the 4peaks when I was living there,, now I want to come back and play in the black canyon system of trails.

  8. I second Black Canyon. That is on my to-do list. Maybe this spring sometime. My fall is fucked.

    Next summer, I will claim it now, I need to get the fuck off my ass and do something. I’m not getting any younger. This lifestyle is killing me.

  9. 04 Matty, what does the road look like these days? Has it been largely sanitized relative to the photo above?
    I’d hoped to ride it last year but ended up by-passing it in order to do a couple others in the area. ..left it with a few others as reason to go back.