Thought I would send in my ride report as well.  A co-worker was able to borrow his nephew's bike for me and took me on a tour of the hills south of Bologna.  Unfortunately, he didn't have an allen wrench to adjust the seat height so I was riding a bike a bit too small – (Guido or Farkas would have been quite happy on the bike – see picture below). Nevertheless, the bike was comfortable and Nicolo was happy because it slowed me down (he has not been riding – you'll see from my Strava post the pace up the hills was not Descender-like as I was trying to be nice and wait for my host).   The roads were small and rural with very few cars but good road surfaces.  Strava shows the ride as having three cat 4 and one cat 3 climb.  Most were in the 6-8% grade with a few sections in the 11-15%.  You guys would have loved it! The weather was partly cloudy but temperature was perfect.  There were quite gusty winds up in the hills, especially once exposed on the south and east side, but that gave us some tailwind on the valleys coming back and we were able to achieve a reasonable pace for some stretches (Nicolo had a hard time holding above 40km/hr.)

All in all, we covered 36 miles and a little over 3,000 ft.  The whole time I kept thinking how much fun it would have been to have the Club together on this ride – it was a perfect Descenders route.  We saw quite a few other riders and from what I saw, the Descenders would have been top dogs.

Sorry you couldn't be with me, but I'd be happy to organize a Club excursion to Bologna in the future.  Nicolo tells me there is an annual event on May 1st covering 100 miles and the 10 hills around Bologna!