After seeing that movie, 8 year old me fell in love with cycling and the idea of going to Europe. In my teens I started racing bikes and followed European racing as much as a person could back then. I would drive to Tower Records to buy French and Italian cycling magazines. In high school, I came up with the genius idea of befriending all of the foreign exchange students so I would have a place to stay when I moved to Europe with my bike.

Reality caught up to my dreams as I started accepting I was a completely mediocre bike racer. But, I still loved everything European and the whole time I was toiling away in restaurants I continued to follow European racing. 

In the summer of 2001, my wife and I finally took a trip abroad. We spent two weeks traveling through Europe. In Italy, we visited Florence and the Cinque Terre. We drove across Southern France and took in a stage of the Tour de France at l’Alpe d’Huez, and then on to Switzerland.

On the plane ride home, I kept my tired wife awake talking to her about the gelato we had eaten in Italy and wondering why there was none in the San Francisco Bay Area. I didn’t have the resources or the courage to start my own business but two years later I met Chris and the gelato dream became a reality.

So, years later when my little girls asked me how I got a cool job like making gelato, I laughed and said, “Well, it’s probably because of that movie Breaking Away.”