Green, elegant, a woman's bike, with a basket, attached to a pole, in Milan. The white, all-uppercase inscription on the oblique tube, touched my heart. Filippo Zanazzi.

Filippo left - today - eleven years ago. Eleven years that flew by. Filippo was the son of Renzo, pink jersey at the 1947 Giro d'Italia, the grandson of Valeriano, a lifetime as a domestique, and Mario, one year as a professional, and that year - it was 1952 - all three brothers were professionals. Then the workshop on Via Solari corner Via Stendhal, in Milan, Renzo's walls, Valeriano's manual labor, Filippo's legacy.

Filippo had found, in that three-by-five space, plus the courtyard where he parked bikes to be serviced and delivered, his little earthly paradise. Inside, the cult of the bicycle was venerated in all its forms: city and racing, road and trails, men and women, own and others', steel and carbon, pedals and words, projects and memories, in Italian and English, especially in Milanese. Very much workshop, store, emporium, somewhat also living room, more like a dining room, bivouac and refuge, free port and first aid.

Filippo Zanazzi knew how to do it. With his hands and his ways. He fixed, repaired, adjusted, replaced, transplanted, lubricated. Meanwhile, he welcomed, entertained, listened, understood, comforted, encouraged. People would come to him with a broken bike and spirits down. They would leave him with the bike resurrected and morale sky-high. With the first pedal strokes, one risked taking off. Until at sixty years old, looking ten years younger, Filippo (Pippo to his friends) closed shop and life. After a decade tenaciously managed by Rossignoli, the shop has been closed.

But the bicycles signed by Filippo Zanazzi live on. Occasionally emerging from a parking lot, waiting at a traffic light, whirling along the Navigli, struggling up the Brianza Hills. Like a Mantegna painting emigrating from the art gallery, like a Beatles track resonating from a rooftop, like a Gianni Rodari nursery rhyme echoing from a classroom. Brilliant flashes. Free visions. Living moments.