The parking lot encircling the hotel was packed, despite it being a weekday. Among a sea of rental fleet specials, a leviathan tractor trailer was parked, taking up four parking slots and the adjacent lane. The Ducati Corse livery, bright rosso paint and the anticipation of what lay within, triggered salivation like a Kobe steakhouse….

Back in 1971 Shirley Bassey was singing “Diamonds are Forever” and Ducati had just released the GT750, a product of Fabio Taglioni’s (Dr. T’s) prediction that motorcycle displacements were on the rise. The engineer took Ducati’s existing SOHC, two-valve, single-cylinder design, bodged it to another and voila, the first Ducati 90-degree L-Twin. The GT750 inspired…

The “236” leading to Big Basin outside San Francisco narrows from two lanes to what can generously be described as one and a half. The surface is a “squirm” of tar snakes, wetted to slickness by the morning marine layer. Corners fold on themselves, radii decreasing and elevations changing. Detritus litters the roads. I should…

Riding into the city the dome of the windscreen reflects the Lion’s Gate Bridge’s lights in a moment of cinematic grace reminiscent of David Bowman’s face shield in Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey. The clocks are marked with fine point font, thin elegant needles, and the chrome bezels reflect a glittering world.  The cowling amplifies the…

It’s a scene from a script.  The Ducati 1098S ascends the Angeles Crest, while below a fierce wildfire consumes hectares of brush in L.A.’s Griffith Park.  Cut to news footage of residents evacuating the southern boundary.  A close-up of twin undertail Termignoni exhaust, the only soundtrack their bellicose bass harmonization.  A series of pans as…

My shoulders are molten slag, my wrists are twin torments worthy of the inquisition, the Rocky Mountain air has taken on a hypothermic edge, and rain torrents through my perforated leathers so hard it stings my forearms and my face.  I’ve abandoned my long since fogged over visor; it’s become a detriment this night.  Between…

There is power here; I felt it first riding along the serpentine asphalt that serves as the entryway to Laguna Seca.  Now, stepping out onto the pit lane the energy intensifies, the new-age types might have Sedona but there is no doubt that a confluence of motorsport Ley-lines meet here.  I feel a tingle in…

Dear Ducati, What would possess you to create a bike like the Multistrada 1000?  This is not a motorcycle so much a dopamine pump directly to the fun-centre of the brain; a two-wheeled narcotic of Hunter S. Thompson proportions with a preponderance of addictive qualities to match the most potent of designer chemicals.  I am…

This morning, it seems, someone swapped my regular of dose of Raisin Bran with a big bowl of stupid.  The scrape of the knee-puck is official notice; I’m being an idiot and my actions are heroic only in the bench-racing retellings.  This is November, above the fog layer it is clear and cold, and the…

Kevin Davis from Ducati Canada is waxing poetic about the Supersport 1000 DS, “It’s a really good track bike.  I was doing 240kp/h down the front straight, that’s more than enough.”  Not being conversant with Race City’s track, and even less so with Ducati’s Supersport series I nodded, then got on with analyzing the vague…

The Termignoni burble menacingly to themselves, the dry clutch issues its rattle, and while others hear a cacophony, a Ducatista hears a very special opus.  That sentence in itself could be used to describe any number of bikes in the Ducati line, but this is special.  First it’s a used Ducati ST3 with a mere…