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No doubt by now you've seen the CyclingTips story about Mario Cipollini's history of domestic violence:

Mario Cipollini is one of professional cycling's most beloved and enduring characters.

But in the wake of serious allegations of violence against female family members, the colourful Italian's darker side can no longer be ignored.https://t.co/pr1LWFt52g pic.twitter.com/lMHNVnmu8O

— CyclingTips (@cyclingtips) March 12, 2019

Like most American cycling fans, I was simultaneously in awe of Cipollini's results on the bike and entertained by his unctuous antics in a laughing-at-him-and-not-with-him kind of way, hence my incessant references to him.  Of course, Cipollini already stopped seeming funny to me back in May of 2017, when I saw him in person and realized he wasn't a cartoon:

But now that I know who he really is it's officially the end of an era.

I guess if you write a bike blog long enough you'll eventually see all your memes become unfunny:

Though maybe it just I who have become unfunny:

Hey, I may not be able to amuse you with my words, but at least my physique is always good for a guffaw.

By the way, I'm not sure what to make of the fact that the CyclingTips story didn't mention Cipollini's Rock Racing days:

In retrospect it was fairly obvious he was morally bankrupt.

Speaking of Eroica California (that's where that unfortunate photo of me was taken), I continue to use it as an excuse to fuck off and ride my bike in the middle of the day, and today I headed out astride the Renovo:

In recent weeks I've been alternating between bikes made of steel, "stainless" steel, and crabon, and I must confess that, even with Gatorskins and a cheap pair of wheels, the Renovo does have a preternaturally smooth ride quality that I can only attribute to one thing:

At the same time, the bike is still creaking--not a lot, but it's there.  Having swapped wheels, snugged everything up, installed a new cassette, and so forth, at this point it's hard not to blame the frame:

Also, on various parts of the frame there are these cloudy spots that look like unbuffed wax:

I have occasionally rubbed the bike down with rags soiled by lubricants and solvents of unknown provenance [insert "rubbing my wood with soiled rags" joke here], so maybe that's what's going on, but about a year and a half in the Renovo has become that exquisite chest of drawers that is all dinged up and liable to collapse at any moment, but you'll be damned if you're gonna get rid of it because it's an heirloom and also who wants to spend half the day putting together a new one from Ikea anyway?

Also, early in the ride, I was getting a persistent knocking sound while out of the saddle.  I decided to ignore it, only to eventually discover that my tool roll had spontaneously ejected itself and the sound I'd been hearing was the toe strap buckle knocking against the seatmast.  By this point, I was basically here:

Which is roughly three miles from my home.  The tool roll could have fallen off anywhere, but I couldn't in good conscience abandon it, since it contained the following invaluable items:

--An inner tube
--Tire levers
--A patch kit
--A chain tool
--A multitool (I think?)
--The combination pedal wrench/coupler opener for my travel bike
--One of those round spoke wrenches that fits lots of different nipple sizes
--A little wrench that fits these theft-proof skewers I wasn't using

(If you're wondering why I was carrying so much random crap it's because I'd taken it off my travel bike and hadn't bothered to edit the contents.)

As you can see, between the contents and the tool roll itself that was like $100 worth of crap, and so I had no choice but to look for it.  So I backtracked, and after about a mile and a half I finally found it on Broadway where it had clearly been run over by a truck:

It's got a few holes in it now but everything appears to have more or less survived. 

And with that I stuffed it in my jersey pocket and continued on my way.