I’m Fabio.

I’m a sales agent. During the week I usually drive around a wonderful territory that I can fully enjoy in the weekend, riding my road bike.

My usual area includes the provinces of Ascoli Piceno, Fermo, Macerata, but sometimes I load my bike in the car and test new places and routes.

I don’t like flat tracks. Cycling for hours staying at sea level isn’t my passion. On the other hand, I love to climb on mountains, with the landscape that grows and grows and silence that becomes a constant presence.

I usually bycicle alone, but sometimes, when it happens, I like to have a word with an unexpected travel mate. During these chats I discovered that many cyclists always take the same paths and ignore some very interesting alternative roads. So I decided to share my usual itineraries in this blog.

However I won’t stop to go cycling in areas that I don’t know. Bycicle is a wonderful vehicle that allows to know the territory and “travelling” without go too far away.

I think that very few sports can be considered “life coach” as cycling can be.

“Coach” in its broadest sense. Bycicle theachs you to suffer, to enjoy the suffering, to know yourself, your limits and how to go beyond them sometimes.

Life and the world are all over you… And bycicle makes you know what’s around you, the territory where you live, that usually you see through a car glass, in a very distant and not participative way.

You can discover little villages just seen from a distance, or always ignored because hidden from the main road and only witnessed by a blue road sign. Landscapes that you can’t notice, because you are driving and thinking about more important issues.

And you can even learn stories. People you can’t chat while you are working: old people, sheperds, farmers, the owner of a little village’s bar that makes a sandwich with salami or a cappuccino, a gas station attendant that helps you with a flat tire when your pump is broken…

Many people have a story to tell and they seem happy to do it to someone coming by bycicle, on his own strengths and at peace with himself.

Bike is that for me. A means to know myself and a vehicle to discover the country in which I live… In other words, a means to “travel”.

To do it we need to have time, evidently. If we are involved in training for a competition we will just try to reduce the time of our tour, we will focus on the cyclocomputer and won’t see what’s around us. In this blog Time factor is not considered, in the sense that stopping at a bar to have a cappuccino and to chat is for me more enjoyable and satisfactory than a better average speed.

This blog arises from my wish to share my passion for the bike and the territory I live in. It’s addressed to anyone who likes cycling on scenic routes, enjoying nature and the many medieval villages of the Marche Area.

Another purpose is promoting bike tourism, especially in Marche Region, Ascoli Piceno, Fermo and Macerata areas. In fact, I think that this area is very suitable for a cycling holiday, with the opportunity to go from the sea to the mountains in the same day. The beautiful Adriatic cost, the green hills with their medieval villages, the Monti Azzurri (Blue Mountains, as Giacomo Leopardi called the Sibillini Ridge) always as a scenery, the very good food and wine… These come together to make this region very good for anyone who wants to have a nice and unusual holiday in open air.

My itineraries involve, as it’s possible, quiet and low traffic roads, because I like to cycling safely and peacefully. That means that rarely I will take a main road on the valley floor, but I’ll prefer a low traffic ridge route. The altimetry will be corrugated, with many climbs and descents, very hard situation if you’re not trained. This is a peculiar feature of our hills.

My vehicle is a road bike, so my itineraries involve only paved roads; uneven roads will be indicated.

What you’ll find in this blog

• reports of my bike experiences
• detailed itinerary maps, with tips about hard segments, dangers, water points, food points, interesting places
• altimetric general profiles, detailed altimetries of interesting climbs
• tracks and waypoints downloadable as gpx file
• stories I have learned during my tours
• tips for the “weekend cyclists” as I am

What You won’t find here

• times, statistics and everything concerning competition; cycling means to me the conquest of peace that I lose during week, so I’m not interested in the athletic performance
• references to competitive cycling; exceptions are the stories of great champions in the “Olympus of heroes” of this sport (Coppi, Bartali, Magni, Pantani…), inspirational men for several generations
• technical contents: I’m not a mechanic; I do the cleaning and maintenance work just for what is necessary; I have my mechanic who knows his job better than me.