Recall that GCN+ was a mere €20 for an entire year’s subscription. Well, I might have added an extra €5000 or more to that this morning. Here’s what happened.

I watched two interesting little documentaries produced by GCN yesterday; the first on Colnago (went straight to that one, obviously) and the other on Columbus, the great Italian steel tube maker. Both of them were interesting and I learned a few things, including the fact that I need to buy a steel bike again.

I didn’t know this but Columbus bought iconic bike maker, Cinelli, some decades ago, and suddenly I must have one of these:

That’s a bike up there (in beautiful Columbus steel), but I’ll probably end up receiving this version of it:

This is the Cinelli Nemo, their latest version of the famous Supercorsa they produced for many many years. The frame is handmade made in Italy using Spirit Columbus tubing from down the road near Milan.

It’s not their lightest frameset, but at under €2000 it’s about half of what I might pay for a custom frame or another ‘superbike’ frameset. Cinelli’s top shelf frame is this stainless-steel beauty, which comes in under 1500 grams, believe it or not (without fork, I guess). This is just under €4000.

I’m starting to think of my Colnago as my go-to bike for the foreseeable future, and something that I can upgrade with groupsets and wheels for many years to come. So that leaves me with my next one being a training bike that I can also take to the mountains in a pinch. As I get older, I might appreciate the feel of steel more, too, or that’s one way I’ll justify the purchase anyway.

Incidentally, Cinelli has an ‘art program‘, which seems to be the side project of Antonio Colombo, the big honcho of both Columbus and Cinelli. He is an ardent art collector and even has his own contemporary art museum in Milan. The ‘project’ is essentially Antonio getting his favorite artists to design stuff for him. Here’s a taste, but there are hundreds of items in Cinelli’s store.

So, add another €100 or so for the t-shirts and cycling caps in my ‘cart’ at the moment. I really should have checked the small print for hidden costs when signing up for GCN+.