The Pirate and the Red Baron

Good morning Folkriders,

I believe that all the ideas we manage to realize as adults always originate when we were children. In some cases we are aware of it, in others less so, but the genesis is always the same. Ideas follow their own particular seasonal cycle: they blossom, thrive, lull, perhaps even die in some aspects. But then they always return.

This is why, when I go downhill riding—with, alas, questionable results—with a good friend of mine, I always look forward to hearing his stories about his eight-year-old son. How he's growing up, and above all, how he's passionate about things, how he discovers the world through his own lenses. How he's ready every day to create new heroes to emulate and new dreams to pursue.

So, between the nostalgia of a memory and the bittersweet envy that only children of old are capable of feeling, I try to reconnect with those sensations, with that clear and limitless purity of those who slowly open their eyes to the magic of things.

And luckily, happily, I always manage to rediscover that magic. Of course, not without a little big secret.

Because perhaps the real worry is precisely this: each of us has the right to remain attached to the thrill of childhood, one of the few, truly great luxuries in our lives.

Except that, almost always, help is needed. A helping hand reaching out to that time. An unbreakable seal that seals the bond with your most imaginative self, making it perpetual and unshakeable.

Well, the secret I was talking about before, The Unbreakable Seal, if you are reading these lines, you already know it well.

It has a diamond frame, two wheels, two pedals, a chain and a beautiful soul.

Her name is Bicycle, meaning she alone teaches you to travel through time and space. In the dimensions of territory and fantasy, or, in my case, she who always takes me back to my era, that of the Pirate and the Red Baron.

I was also about eight years old, in 1998. And my days were divided between these two equally distant figures. And yet, you could see one clearly. He had grown up there, a few steps from where you lived. He wore a bandana and an earring. At a certain point, even a goatee. And when you saw him leave, over the most fearsome mountains of Italy and France, it seemed to you that heaven was really there,  within jumping distance.

The other, you learned about from aviation books, which you devoured relentlessly.  And then off I went, after drawing—badly—what looked like the cockpit of a triplane on an old piece of moving cardboard. Entire afternoons were spent dreaming of flying, in a red-liveried aircraft. And I imagined him, at the head of his Flying Circus, in that explosion of color that bathed the skies of Europe. It captured my imagination like little else, before or since.

The point was, I was always chasing the Pirate and the Red Baron. In books, on TV, every time I went out into the world. It was precisely that distance, that unreachability, that unleashed the power of the imagination.  To give me that enthusiasm, full of emulation, perhaps even naive imitation. Without realizing, of course, that these were two young men, two icons, certainly in very different fields, but not sinless heroes. I would, of course, understand this later.

What I immediately understood was that they helped shape who I wanted to be: hungry for freedom and adventure, eager to leave my mark, to challenge banality, to always let imagination win.

I was there on that June 6, 1999, on Corso Sempione in Milan. The Giro d'Italia was coming, but the Pirate wasn't there. Among the colorful lightning bolts biting the asphalt, I could only follow his shadow.

I was there the following year, at my fifth-grade exam, with a paper that, I remember, began with a photo of the Red Triplane on the cover. And after that moment, when I recounted its story, as only an enthusiastic eleven-year-old can be, I almost gave it permission to leave my thoughts.

After all these years, I still don't know if I've let them go.

But I know how much I still love pedaling through the streets of my city or the paths of my countryside. Shooting as if I wanted to reach the sky. Hoping everyone will turn around, enraptured by the light and color released by the wake of my bike.

I always return to those feelings. With the experience of the years, with an inevitable dose of added realism or disillusionment.

But I believe that if you stay in touch with your purest ideas, you will never stop feeling in your place.