Dear Eagle readers, last month I happened to be in your lovely Napa Valley! The weather was dismally grey and rainy, so regrettably, I didn’t get a chance to connect with the club and get any riding in. My reason for being there was serious business anyway. The Copia Center scandal had forced His Eminence to send an ambassador to Northern California to assess whether the Vatican should take serious legal matters against Copia, and the “Artistic Display” of the defecating Pope. I, Euro Freddie, being the one entrusted with maintaining His most sacred objects (i.e. the Campagnolo 50th Anniversary Gruppo, #002) was His obvious candidate for this delicate assignment.
Discretion and decorum, of course, are the laborious processes in such sullied affairs. The Holy City does not want its name and reputation dragged through the muck of sorted public display and the straining, peristaltic movements of the courts. Yet the Seat of the Christian Empire will not tolerate mockery, and I was carefully instructed to be swift about my business and thorough in its clean-up operations.
Upon confronting the offending object at the newly opened “Copia, the American Center for Wine, Food, and Dubious Arts”, I was almost immediately overcome with a very serious bout of giggling. There He was, only two inches high. And the way the little fellow was bent over, with His robes all hiked up... It was hysterically funny. I laughed until I thought my sides would split, and my exhibit pamphlet was soaked in tears. Fortunately, a young local cyclist came to my rescue, and whisked me out the back door. As we walked along the riverside bike path, Candi turned to me and said, “The whole thing is really so silly... Robert Mondavi’s charging the public $12.50 to celebrate his self-serving, glorified gift shop”. We then both looked up and smiled at a group of visitors who had paid a further surcharge of $40.00, for the privilege of partaking in an exclusive outdoor workshop, conducted to study earthworms pooping in the wild.
So until next month, let’s all cycle with a bit of propriety -Euro Freddie.