Twisting Asphalt - A SoCal Ducati Motorcycle Blog

With the year quickly wrapping itself up I thought it’d be rather interesting and perhaps even a bit enjoyable to look back at the past year of riding the Twisting Asphalt around Southern California. Given my recent bout with self-reflection I doubt that this is an altogether shocking concept but every now and then it’s somewhat refreshing to relive the glory and the greatness that exists in this part of the world.

I suppose that this is also a bit of a right of passage for a blog. Perhaps even a bit of a gut check. I imagine that given the time of year other bloggers will soon be issuing their reflections on the past year of their lives as well. It’s one of the great joys of writing something that’s both personal and externally consumable. While there’s a tremendous amount of content that exists here, within these pages, it’s not as easy to dismiss as regular pulp fiction and yet not so deep as to lose sight of what it’s trying to be. Of course I still find this entity a hard beast to qualify. I’m beginning to think that I will never quite know what to think of it. The blog has become part introspective, part real world, part experience and part passion. Sometimes those thoughts overlap and at other times they’re greatly at odds with each other. Yet the reality is that when you sit down and take it all in as a whole it’s less constrained and yet somehow much more human.

Obviously it would be foolhardy and rather egotistical to believe that this humanity is unique to this particular blog. The reality is that it is one of the great attributes of the blogosphere as a whole. Whether you read something in the motorcycle niche or elsewhere, the reality is that the drama contained with in these spaces comes from the never ending story that’s at hand. The ups and the downs. The highs and the lows. The things that are planned and ones that are not. They all contribute to making a blog – any blog for that matter - the most human of tales because they’re unfiltered creatures full of all the shades of reality.

My year got off to a rather auspicious start in January when the Los Angeles basin received a couple straight months of seemingly endless rainfall. The first post to highlight this during the new year was matter-of-factly titled, Malibu Mud Slide Damage. Unlike most cities, I find that Angelinos have a particularly difficult time when it gets wet. Worse than dealing with the vast inability of most LA drivers to deal with wet roads, was the startling damage that was done to the canyons. Of course in all honesty I don’t know which took a greater beating, the asphalt around Los Angeles or my psyche because I wasn’t riding very much.

photo by heathervescent

I’m sure CalTrans will have the PCH back up in no time, but the canyons will take awhile to dry out. To be honest, on one hand I’m a bit bummed by all the damage but then I remind myself that if it wasn’t for winter weather like we’ve had for the past last several weeks some of the canyon roads Milt and I love so much won’t exist in the first place. So it goes…

Unfortunately my early predictions that it would take awhile for the canyons to come back to life was far to insightful… When I finally got Back in the Saddle again for my first ride of the New Year on January 24th, I was blown away by the damage…

For as long as I can remember riding with MotorMilt, we have both preached to each other that ‘any ride is better than no ride’. Well, yesterday that axiom met it’s match. The roads were just filthy, dirty, distant relatives of the roads I know so well. I had fully expected that there’d be debris on the roads - after any decent rain in LA there’s always the seemingly prerequisite rock or two standing in your way - but the level to which the canyon roads have been destroyed it is quite extraordinary. Whole chunks of curb are gone in certain places, mini-mud slides are everywhere and in typical SoCal Caltrans fashion a good portion of two lane roads are now one lane. Stop signs are almost popping up at the mile mark.

The SoCal roads were significantly better in early February when MotorMilt and I headed up to the canyons. My most immediate thought at the time was, Finally a Ride! and with good reason… The Yellow 999 was almost broken in…

right now I’m less than 50 miles away from completely breaking in the bike. Seems like I’ve been writing about getting the Ducs broken in for quite sometime so it’s nice to finally be getting close to wrapping that up once and for all. Seeing as how I’m all most there, I pushed the bike up past 8 grand in the rpms a few times today. WOW. It’s simply amazing what a difference only a couple hundred rpms make once you’re almost at the top of the rpm range. From 8k to 9.5k was unbelievable. Just a frigg’n rocketship. I found myself looking down at the speedo and just laughing under my helmet. It just seems so unatural to be going 90+ mph in 2nd gear.

Unfortunately early predictions that riding season was a full go were a bit unfounded since as it turned out The only constant is rain.

I read yesterday in the LA Times that this is the third highest rainfall since 1877 - somewhere close to 30 inches if I recall correctly - and as each passing day goes by, more and more rain falls on the roads that I know and love. It unfortunate, but they’re being completely destroyed. At this rate I doubt the canyons will be back up and running - so to speak - until the end of the summer at the earliest. Whole sides of the canyon roads have simply fallen apart or more aptly fallen off. Washed away, never to come back quite the same as they were before all this nonsense started. Meanwhile my desire to ride grows and grows, yet theres just no place to go.

Thankfully life was about to turn the corner.. And in a big way… By the time the beginning of March rolled around I finally was able to take The First True Ride of The Year and it was just absolutely glorious.

On that day I posted a paragraph that somehow seems incredibly apt now that it’s the end of the year the riding season is dwindling down…

…everything just seemed to turn around. I hadn’t realized just what a toll being off the bike for so long had been. Not in a physical or performance sense, I know the rust will work itself off, but rather in an emotional sense. I can’t really explain it, but when I’m regularly riding once or twice a weekend, everything just seems better. Life seems smoother. Days go by faster. I get more excited for the weekends. I even enjoy the simple parts of my day more. Way back when I first started riding I had no idea that this very singular activity would ever mean this much to me, but it does and perhaps thats why today just getting the Duc up in the rpm range and discretely pushing past the speed limit in certain places made me feel so much more alive than I’ve felt in quite sometime.

Re-reading that bit of text, I’m struck by how much my passion for riding as grown during the past year. I simply have come to love it and in particular these bikes. They’re majestic machines that somehow cut to the core of my soul. That’s not to say that they’re for everyone and the fact that so many other options exist for other folks to fulfill their passion is fantastic - but for me somehow they simply sing.

The next weekend I thankfully felt A Needed Unwinding while riding through the canyons and wrote one of my more insightful bits from the past year…

While swinging around a rather decent sweeper on Encinal Canyon this morning about halfway through the ride I was struck by the thought that over the course of my life the word ‘relaxation’ has continued to evolve in its meaning. Almost to a point where sometimes I think it seems like an organic concept, not a definition in a book. Originally relaxing seemed like such a simple idea - have a day off, go do something you enjoy and feel refreshed afterwards. Yet these days, as more and more of ‘the real world’ creeps its way into my personal time, I find it harder and harder to just lose myself and feel mellow when I’m not at work. Perhaps thats just growing up, I don’t know.

As March started to come to a close I found myself at the doorstep of my next great adventure… My first track day on a Ducati. With a little less than 72 Hrs Until Track Day it was clear I had some rather mixed emotions when I wrote,

As each hour chips away, I find it harder and harder to contain my growing enthusiasm. It seems like so long ago that we signed up and first started talking about a track day on the Ducs. To finally be on the verge of getting out there is slightly mindblowing. I simply can’t wait to get to Willow Springs and ride these amazing machines in their natural environment for the first time.

Of course on the other hand I’m downright scarred shitless about it to perfectly honest. I suppose some folks would never admit to that, but it’s the truth. I’m perfectly cool with going fast and leaning over, but I’m a bit worried about getting to competitive inside the helmet and then doing something stupid. While looking over the bikes today I had one of those moments where you think of the worst while trying to think of the best.

At the time I had no idea that taking a Ducati to a track day would forever alter my concept of riding. I also can’t quite believe that my first CLASS course on the Duc was only nine months ago. A mere nine months!!! Yet it feels like ages. I suspect that speaks volumes about how warped my sense of time tends to be.

In my inital post about the day it was already clear that I was getting into this trackday thing…

My first Trackday on a Ducati has to rank right up there with some of the greatest experiences in my life. It was truly an awe-inspiring adventure in so many ways and on so many levels, some of which I’m just now getting a handle on twenty four hours after we wrapped up at the track. Reg, Gigi & the rest of the CLASS folks were fantastic. If there is a more mellow, low key, no-pressure, highly educational and instructional track environment I’d be amazed. These folks are just fun to be around and when you get them out on a track they’re even better.

Two of my favorite pictures from the year - for two very different reasons - also occured during that trackday. I believe that the great Gaz happened to snap both photos.

The first pict is simply one of those rare moments in time when a snapshot is able to capture so much more than the human eye. Not because of the colors or the contrast, but rather the image speaks volumes about the shared father and son experience that riding can offer. While at first glance I’ll admit that MM is a bit oddly posed, at that moment in time he was just getting up from checking the air pressure in my tires after I had pulled the bike out of the stand. His continual caring, inspiration and watchful gaze has been one of the greatest byproducts that riding has brought me, both this year and years past. It’s something that I’m not sure I adequately comment on or openly cherish enough.

The second photo is much less emotional yet just as striking for me - not because it’s deeply meaningful in the same way but rather because it so clearly shows how far my riding has come when you compare it to later photos from the same corner (turn 14) taken during my second track day expereince at The Streets of Willow. My skill level has so dramatically increased during the course of this year that when I stand back and take it all in I find myself both shocked and amazingly excited.

That sense of excitement seemed directly connected to my sense of growning confidence in both the bike and my riding ability as a whole. A few days after posting my inital impressions of the CLASS course, I penned a much more detailed description of the day, titled, Trackday : The Adventure Continues. In that post there was a bit of rather positive foreshadowing that highlighted my growning awareness on the bike…

In retrospect not only have I progressed as a rider in a physical sense, such as how far I’m leaning over or my feel for the brakes, but also in a mental sense. Several times while I was out on the track I had what one of the CLASS instructors named Fred would call ‘a moment of concern’ and this time instead of going in the tank like I did after the ABS engaging entry to the corkscrew (At Leguna Seca on a BMW), I just went on and let it roll. Moving past whatever happened in whatever distance exsisted between the last corner and the next one.

Of course as long time readers know by now that particular post also contained some rather dark foreshadowing - only I had no idea how dark at the time…

As glorious as the day was it ended a bit disasterly…when we got back to where we were staying I slowed down to the park the bike and bam… oil was coming out of the bottom of the bike. Not a gush exactly, but a decent amount. I wish I had taken a pict of it…I realize that I was running the bike hard at the track, consistently hitting the rev limiter for the first time, but this is a brand new liter racebike. It shouldn’t be spilling oil for no reason after a trackday, it should live for days like this…But such is life I guess. So I’m in a bit of holding pattern for right now.

The next day the Duc got towed to PI and they then worked on her for roughly a month. Needless to say the rest of April ended up rather rideless… But on May 1st I finally got the bike back for a ride and subsequently wrote the post which one might perceive as the final nail in the coffin for the yellow 9, The Italian Diva Sings… And Dies Again…

So I’m not really sure how this will shake out, but I can honestly say that getting back on this particular bike scares the living shit out of me. As motorcyclists we constantly put our faith in so many variables that in all reality we can’t control at all even if we have the illusion that we can. Having a properly working machine is one of the few tenants of our universe that we can have some control over and unfortunately I no longer have the faith that this particular bike - for whatever reason - can and will work the way that it was designed.

The life and death of the yellow ‘04 999 is almost a story of its own. I frankly can’t believe that it even took place during this calendar year. I suspect that should speak volumes as to how far removed from the whole ordeal I now feel. It also perhaps says something about the eventual outcome and the way in which the companies involved handle the situation. Yet the lose of the Duc clearly was weighting on me when I wrote April 6th post All The News That’s Fit To Print…

Several folks have already mention the fact that this probably wouldn’t have happened with a Japanese bike. Like, no shit. As if I didn’t know that… I’d highly doubt that anything this odd would happen with a CBR or a RC51, but then somehow neither of those bikes would speak to my soul nearly as much as the 999 does, so I guess that’s the rub… I find it a bit odd that on one hand I’m extremely pissed that an almost new bike with slightly less than 2,000 miles can suddenly have a piston probelm and yet on the other hand it somehow seems to fit perfectly with what I expect from a Duc. So go figure.

Ultimately the way in which ProItalia, Ducati and Ducati North America handled the event was utterly remarkable. Over the course of the past year several people have written to me asking about my experience and all I can honestly say is that I’ve never felt more taken care of by a company in my life. These days it’s not hard to find negative experiences on the web with any manufacturer but all to seldom do people share when people go out of their way to go above and beyond the call of duty. The way this was handled was remarkable…

While the situation with the 9 was shaking out, I happened to come across one of the best message board threads I read during the year, which of course happened to feature an engine rebuild… What timing huh? In the post A Real World Ducati Engine Rebuild wrote about how a fellow named de5m0mike from the Ducati Monster List member started pulling apart his Monster’s engine without much knowledge. The thread that progressed offered a wonderfully engaging six weeks of trail and error, pain and sweet and sheer perseverance before he ultimately he prevailed. You got to respect that…

On May 11th I took delivery of the new 9… A 2005 999 to be specific and it was truly the Dawn Of A New Ducati. That day I wrote what I think is one of my best descriptions of the Ducati Riding Experience…

I’ve been filled with equal parts passion, lust, emotional excess, loss, devastation, tragedy, and amazing blood pumping excitement. What other brand could offer such extremes?… Whether it’s been a good or bad experience, every moment with the bike has made me feel something. Some sense of emotion or passion. Years of riding BMWs never illicited any sensation on any comparable level. They were absolutely perfect mechanical beasts, but at least for me not nearly as heartfelt. Of course after you spend a few weekends sitting around because your bike is having mechanical issues you logically start to wonder why you should bother with all of this turmoil when you can own a GSXR for less money and in all likely hood have less pitfalls… I suppose it’s only common sense to ask the question. Yet everytime I start to mentally head down that road, I keep coming back to the joy of the Ducati experience. The pure excitement in the way it rides, the way it behaves. It may not be a one-of-a-kind, but it’s certainly not one of several thousand that all look alike. Every time it kicks over something special happens inside me. I don’t know why. It just does. It’s something that feels unique. Perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it is. Yet when I think about it, it works for me. I enjoy it and it means something on a personal level.

Of course the day didn’t stop after I picked up the bike… At that point I just had to take it for a ride and afterwards it was pretty clear that I was feeling much better about life…

By the time we get home I’m flat out amazed at how much different and dare I say, better the ‘05 feels. It’s got more power. It feels lighter. It seems faster turning into corners. The red frame and blacked out wheels and exhaust look awesome. The new fairing seems to cut down on the wind resistance while riding…

Funny how much a bike can affect your mind… Two days later when MotorMilt and I went for the Second Ride: A Santa Paula Loop, the very first hints of my self awareness towards the bike and blog were just beginning to come out… In retrospect it’s also clear that at this point writing about the bike started becoming not only about the motorcycle, but also about my soul…

I’m not sure I can adequately describe how much better things seem when you have the ability to wake up in the morning and head out on a ride. Especially when you get to take advantage of the kind of perfect weather we had today in Southern California. It was absolutely beautiful. For the first time in ages it finally feels like SoCal again.

Right now, I’m physically exhausted, so this will probably be one of my shorter ride postings, yet I find myself still sitting in that wonderful afterglow period that occurs right after you have a fantastic ride. The ‘05 is simply an awesome bike. I feel like I write that a lot about Ducati’s, but this time it’s truly different. From the simple pleasure of just looking at the bike all the way to how it reacts on curvy roads, it’s just something else. After covering roughly 200 miles on it today, I feel like I know her. It’s just an amazing experience on two wheels.

A few weeks later MotorMilt and I took several Memorial Weekend Rides and the result was a blog entry that offered a fairly accurate description of my feelings towards LA…

Seldom in my life have I ever felt as far away from the real world while still being immersed within the trappings of the usual. I might have slept at home, but I sure didn’t stay there. And perhaps it’s because we rode for three straight days and that in and of itself is unusual, but waking up this morning I felt so much more relaxed it’s hard to imagine that I was actually in LA over the holiday weekend. Maybe the planets simply were aligned in some healthy cosmic way, but I wish every weekend felt like this one. It was flat out wonderful - in some many ways and on so many levels.

Long time readers of this blog will probably point out that I’m fairly consistent in my effervescent gushing of all things LA, Ducati or Motorcycle - and while that’s fairly true, like anyone else after awhile the real world can just drive you crazy. You simply need a break. You need to get away. And while I truly would have loved to head up the coast and really get away, having the opportunity to experience so much of LA over the course of one weekend was just great. Sometimes I tend to forget that one of the great assests of the LA basin is the fact that from the coast the mountains, there is a tremendous amount of diversity in geographic textures, climates and atmospheres. No two parts ever feel the same or act similar. Whether it’s from one corner to the next or from one zip code to another, LA offers so many different possibilities all within a two hour drive or ride it’s kinda amazing.

Sometimes you only know When you know you’re home again once you hit the canyons. Because I spent most of the month of June out of town for work, I found myself feeling a need to make up for lost time…

Few things truly wake up your soul like going for your first ride after being out of town for awhile. Right now I honestly have no idea what time my body thinks it is, but after being on the road for the past nine days I woke up at an un-godly hour this morning and was able to hit the road a good two hours before I normally do. This turned out to be the blessing of all blessing as I was able to carve my way through the canyons in complete peace and quiet before the rest of the LA basin woke up. And what a sight it was. The early morning light was absolutely beautiful with golden colored hues lighting up the world before my eyes. And after seeing nothing but straight lines and boring roads for the past several days it was nice to finally see some curves again. Something that begged for a sportbike and not a harley.

By the time the end of June rolled around, I was just starting to realize what this blog had become. It was now all Ducati, all the time. So in honor of a year plus of blogging, I took a personal holiday of sorts and rode somewhere I’d never been in the LA Basin. The Angeles Crest… The write up that followed, titled, A 1 Year Celebration : The Angeles Crest, offers some other examples of my growing insight into blogging…

over the course of the past twelve or thirteen months I’ve gradually found more and more focus. Originally I had a whole bunch of various categories and divergent topics, but ultimately as time has gone on I’ve only really written about one thing and one thing only.

Motorcycles.

Or more specifically my bikes, my rides and the parts of the motorcycle industry that interest me on either a personal level or because of their gee-whiz nature. In retospect perhaps this focus or dedication to writing about riding should have been obvious. While there are a few entries I post-dated for the sake of hierarchal organization, the blog started right after MotorMilt & I came back from our six day Lost Coast Expedition of 2004. It was a six day 1,200 mile adventure which when paired with a new digital photo camera made for perfect blogging material. I guess in hindsight I should have seen this mixture as the precursor for the eventual niche nature of this blog, but it took awhile for me to realize that when all is said and done no matter what other interests I’ve got in ‘real life’, only one makes it on to the ‘net…

Motorcycles.

The post also featured two picts that for whatever reason speak to me…

When its ‘on’, like it was during this ride there are truly few places I’d rather be than LA. That’s pretty clear from what I wrote a bit later in the post…

In the matter of just a couple of hours I’d now ridden from the Mountains to the Farms and now the Beach. Where else in America can you reach and see so much diversity in such a short period of time? And had The Angeles Crest been open all the way I would have also hit the edge of the high desert. That’s four types of climates, regions and viewing pleasures all wrapped up in one day.

How these diverse areas can be so close in proximity to each other and yet so different simply boggles my mind. It just doesn’t seem possible to be so high and far away from civilization and then in such a relatively short period of time make your way to an area that feels so classic in its roots and then wrap up the day looking at the Pacific Ocean. Does it really get any better than that?

I was also just starting realize how much more I was now riding…

I have to say that this is the most relaxed I’ve felt in ages. Over 260 miles of sportbike riding in one day sure shakes everything loose. Physically I feel pretty beat up, but emotional I wouldn’t trade this feeling in for anything else in the world. As a bonus the Duc now sits at just over 1250 miles as of tonight. That’s just three very average length Malibu rides until it’s fully broken in which strikes me as one heck of a fast break-in. Given my sense of time that’s probably not as true as I think it is and I’m sure I could look it up on the blog, but right now I just find myself enjoying the day of riding to much to care or put in the effort. The fact that the fully 140 horses are almost at my disposal seems unfathomable given everything that’s happened this year with the bikes in my life.

At the end of June MotorMilt and I took perhaps our greatest gamble on the Ducs… Sunday’s Sport-Touring Sportbike Ride - Part 1. While clearly this post offers a very matter-of-fact point-by-point ride description, but in my mind parts of it also offer the first glimmer of what has become my gradual movement and shift toward the more introspective…

…The previous evening while looking up roads on the internet I came to the unfortunate conclusion that after riding The Santa Monica Mountains almost exclusively for the past several years there just aren’t any local roads that we’ve have never ridden. All the close ones have been done repeatedly, weekend after weekend. Part of me smiled when I realized that, yet on the other hand there’s something magical about trying out a new road for the first time before you know whether or not you enjoy it. Perhaps it’s the most quintessential of motorcycle experiences when you’re coming up to a fresh corner and know nothing about where it leads. There’s some kind of freedom in that kind of moment when you don’t know where the road is going but you’ve already made the choice to head down it anyway…

This post ended up being so long that it eventually ended up being split into two parts - a first for me… The second part was simply called, Sunday’s Sport-Touring Sportbike Ride - Part 2. Not the most creative title, but certainly most logical…

The post showcased another one of my favorite photos from the year…

And it also highlighted my first trip to Foxen Canyon in the Santa Barbara Wine Country…

It only took a few miles to instantly realize that Foxen Canyon is just one of those super-fantastic California rides that everyone should experience at least once. Right off the bat it shoots you down between several extremely iconic SoCal meets Wild West looking farms before giving way to a series of sweepers that slowly rise you up and above the relatively open valley base. Before you know it civilization vanishes and if you’re like me, you don’t even realize until suddenly it’s all just gone. You’re quite literally surrounded by nothing… More ‘nothing’ exists here than I think I’ve ever felt in my entire life. It is simply an amazingly beautiful no-man’s land that forces you stand in awe of nature and the way I imagine California felt fifty or a hundred years ago. This is truly the land of Gene Autry, John Ford, and John Wayne. It takes little imagination to find yourself visualizing cattle rustlers out on the open range.

Somewhere along the route we stopped to take a breather and I was struck by the fact that the only noise I could hear was from the relatively mellow wind gusts that were intermittently floating across the valley. It was the riding equivalent of getting far enough away from the city lights to see all the stars that are out at night. With no noise, relatively no other traffic to speak of and a completely picturesque valley standing before my feet, I just could help but think how living in a concrete city completely warps your mind. Somehow when you drive everyday in LA you slowly begin to believe that the entire world has been paved over and yet nothing could be further from the truth. This valley is only around two hundred miles away from LA and it’s completely untapped…

A few weeks later with the ‘05 999 now fully broken in, I got an early ride in and went for A Malibu Loop in the Morning. It was my first real taste of the redline on this bike… And it was awesome…

Looking down I was at 8,500 RPMs and I’m doing 75 MPH coming down Mullhulland when it finally hit me, having a fully broken in engine is as close to pure bliss as you can get. Coming off of two back-to-back hetic work weeks, the sensation of being thrown back into the saddle and having so much newfound power on hand was just simply awesome. There’s something magical about how these bigs act when they’re close to the redline. They scream. They kick. They act so frigg’n alive it’s unreal. From 8k all the way to the line they morph from mild manored sportbike into entirely different beasts. The sound was intense. It’s loud. It’s racey. It sounds like a sportbike all of sudden.

In the middle of July MotorMilt hurt his knee (at the time we didn’t know how badly, but that’s another post entirely)… One that day I hit the Misty Coastlines & Hot Canyons and felt very aware of losing my riding partner…

I guess over time I’ve just gotten comfortable with the idea that he’s always back there, riding right behind me. I suppose there’s an illusion of safety involved. Obviously logically when it comes to a potential accident there’s not much that he - or anyone else riding behind you - can do but watch. But emotionally it’s always nice to know he’s back there and today I guess I realized that if I was out on his bike that meant that he wasn’t out there with me nor going to be anytime soon.

Even Tonight as I write this, I find it hard to adequately describe the difference between riding alone versus riding alongside MotorMilt. However I fell into this thing called riding, one of the ultimate truths is that it’s a far more satisfying experience with it’s a shared. Not on the same bike, but when you stop, when you shoot the shit, when you stop being fatther and son and just happen to be two guys kicking tires…

As July progressed I wrote a blog entry titled Unrelaxed that offers a particularly good snap shot into my mind..

Usually riding is my one salvation. The one place when I can let go of everything else and just lose myself in the moment - the corners, the curves, the speed, the focus… No today and clearly not yesterday. Every corner seemed to be filled with conflict that was most definately coming from the outside - work, the real world, and all that other junk that goes with it. After today’s jaunt I’m simply at a loss. I feel like I’ve let a golden weekend slip through my fingers.

A few weeks later my world was obviously back in its proper orbit because I felt like I was riding on Rails

There are days when you ride and days when you dream. This morning ended up being a little bit of both… From the minute I hit the road I intrinsically felt that this was going to be a good day. A really good day. And for the first time in what feels like months there was the ‘promise’ of a great ride hanging in the air. As if you could touch it or simply reach up and grab it for yourself.

Around 8 AM I hit Pacific Coast Highway and ‘really’ got on the throttle, and as I found my way through the relatively light traffic I once again felt that sense of excitement and wonder about riding. Almost like it was new again. In all honesty it feels like it’s been quite awhile since I felt that way. To feel free while riding.

The next day I went for a longer ride and while the post was rather unremarkable, I do dig the pict…

A week later I wasn’t riding, but enjoying my job which happened to be capturing the magic of a private AMA testing session at Road Atlanta… I offered some rather immediate Thoughts On Road Atlanta when I got back, but with more critical distance it’s hard for me not to acknowledge how much I learned from hanging around the Hayden boys and Mat Mladin… What they do and how they do it is simply amazing. More so when you see it in person and even further amplified when you get to see it up close in the pits. They’re not only warrirors, but deft minipulators of their motorcycles. After watching them work I came back to LA much more aware of what any motorcycle - and especially my motorcycle - can do.

A few days after returning to LA, I snapped another of my favorite picts from the year…

Roughly a week later I made my first mention of hitting the track again (wonder where I got that idea ) when I wrote Short Shifts = Awesome Ride…

Around 7:15 this morning I was hovering around 9,000 rpms in first gear and doing about eighty when it occured to me that hanging around a racetrack and not being able to ride causes one to push it a bit more than normal once they get back on their bike. Of course since it was early and the canyons were completely empty, I didn’t mind breaking a few speed limits but truth be told I think it’s time for a trackday of my own.

While I greatly enjoyed my ride this morning, it’s becoming clear that it’s time to take this sort of speed somewhere a bit safer. Somewhere that cops don’t roam and there’s no cross traffic.

The post I wrote on August 27th, titled Getting Old and Riding, offers a heck of a window into my mind.

While running around 9 grand and hovering somewhere between sixty-five and seventy-five miles per hour I realized that one of the many things on my mind this morning was the quality of my life. Specifically the quality of my life at this juncture in time when so much seems to be in flux on such a constant basis… As I started whipping through the corners and eeking out the last bits of power from the engine before up-shifting, I started thinking about a column that angrybob from motorcycleblogger.com had written earlier in the week about motorcycle t-shirts. If you haven’t read it you should, it’s not long but it quite nicely sums up what I believe many riders feel - we all want to grow old and still ride. It’s really that simple. That’s the dream.

My memory was spurred on by a scene I had just witnessed while leaving The Rockstore. Eight or Ten men were huddled around a new BMW tourer, holding steaming stryrofoam coffee cups and shooting the shit. They were all well past grey. I’d guess Sixty or Sixty-Five, maybe even Seventy. Yet here they were, all active riders, hanging out at a place I’m sure they’d been to a thousand times before and still clearly enjoying the ride. I don’t know any of these fellows, but it was hard to miss their enjoyment…

On the way back home, I disregarded the slight ache in my right wrist and took Mullhulland all the way back until it hit Stunt Road. At the top of Stunt I pulled off - as I more or less usually do since it offers both decent pavement and a wonderful view. Standing there, looking out over part of ‘The Valley’, the sights and sounds reminded me of my childhood and I couldn’t help but think that the guys standing around at The Rockstore are exactly who I want to age into… I’m not sure exactly how to connect the dots along the journey, but I know the destination. I want to be that white haired seventy-five year old sipping coffee on a Saturday morning.

September 3rd I got Back from Colorado after spending a few days interviewing and shooting with famed motorcycle journalist and author Nick Ienatsch.

When I got back I wrote,

After spending a few days with Nick it’s hard not to want to ride. The man simply knows his motorcycles and has that unique ability to communicate what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and how to minipulate them better. As a rider it’s simply mindblowing to listen to him. But more important than his knowledge of sportbikes is the fact that he’s simply one of the coolest, most down to earth people I’ve ever met. Period.

Reading that piece of writing now I feel like it slightly missed the mark in one important respect, meeting Nick and listening to him talk about motorcycles was undoubtably as close as I’ve ever come to having a personal epiphany. Some people are simply born teachers and in my book he’s one of those special communicators that not only can convey information, but also instill confidence in you. When I look back at what I achived with my riding after hanging out with Nick it’s very clear to me that he was an instrumental part of my year.

A few weeks later I took a ride up into the canyons and remarked that When It’s Right, It’s Right…

Five days ago I openly wondered whether or not I had lost the ability to lose myself in the ride… Today I found out that I never should have worried. Somewhere and somehow I made the flip back to an emotionally charged feeling of amusement, joy and utter freedom while out riding. It’s an amazing feeling when you and the bike find a middle ground - that beautiful place where you’re both happy - and today it was on…Once again there was a magic about being out in the canyons before the world woke up, while the roads were wide open and the sun was just barely beginning to rise. Mile after mile I watched the world take on yet another meaning as I repeatedly worked my way around the bike and flicked through the gears and revved up the throttle. It was glorious in that kind of mesmerizing sort of way that sometimes I think comes straight from the soul and is so clearly a product of being and staying in the moment. If I could only freeze time to taste that brief bit of life again I would. It was just fantastic.

Around this time I also signed up for my second track day of the year, once again with the CLASS Course folks… This of course lead to a post titled, Trackday Prep & New Duds.

There are two bits from the post that I find of interest. The first highlights my growning thirst for more knowledge…

Now that I’ve finally got some time to both breath again and think ahead, I find myself in the midst of starting to plan out my upcoming trackday. Given the madness that ensued last time I took the ‘04 999 to Willow (See Nothing Like A Trackday, Trackday The Adventure Continues , and The Italian Diva Sings and Dies Again) I’ve decided that this time instead of riding my bike up to Willow, I’m going to be a little bit smarter and drive it up.

This of course no doubt will result a few new courses in my continuing moto-education as I’ve never really needed to deal with things like truck ramps, handlebar tie-down gizmo’s, etc. with a streetbike. When I was younger we used to trailer our dirtbikes, but that was a long time ago… And let’s be honest does anyone really care if they scratch their dropped in the mud, beat to shit CR250? Oddly I find myself greatly looking forward to this new found knowledge. Somehow I get the feeling that it simply will not be the last time I use it…

The second bit of the post is less logically practical but much more self aware…Re-reading it, it seems clear that when I was writing this I barely understood the change that was going on…

Clearly when it comes to riding, things are changing for me… And as things have begun to move into more of a ’sport’ category over the course of this year I’ve continued to comment on safety. Specifically my safety! Perhaps even to a greater extent than I have even realized until the great Gaz mentioned on one of our buisness trip travels that I seemed rather preoccupied with the topic at times. Hanging out with Ienatsch was more or less the last straw because after seeing his collection of racing leathers it really hit home that I’ve been riding under-protected for my style of riding. This is not a judgement call on brands or styles or other ways of protecting yourself while riding. Simply a reaction on a personal level. The faster I get, the more time I’ve been spending while riding thinking about what would happen if I had a ‘get off moment’.

Oddly enough just one day after writing about how things were starting to change on the bike, suddenly everything changed when I came home and wrote, Just Puck It.

At the first corner I somoothly apply the brakes and the bike starts standing up. As I slow down, I catch my first glimpse of the first curve. From this point forward the word ’straight’ is just a relative term. Each corner comes flying at rapid fire pace and quickly it becomes a parade of lefts and rights and lefts. The bike singing a song that I’m just happy to witness. And while I’m the one that’s in control, I can’t help but think that I’m just the passenger here. This is really the bike’s show. It’s living. It’s breathing. It’s just hitting everything as if this is a dream. The phrase ‘out of body experience’ simply doesn’t cut it. With each twist of the wrist I’m leaning and lifting, swinging and dancing, moving around in this fantastically focused ballet. Fluid motion is perhaps the best description and after each corner I can ‘t believe it can get better, but it does… I keep reaching further, swinging farther, accelerating just a little bit more, braking just a bit later… And that’s when it happened….

My first puck on the pavement.

The post also included two of the better picts from the year…

Entering October I was consciously aware where I was headed with my riding, but more interestingly I also openly thinking about the skill of riding in a more global sense. That’s pretty clear when you read Which Way Do You Go?.

Over the course of the past day and a half I’ve been thinking a great deal about this skill we call ‘motorcycle riding’. While there are a great number of skills one can choose to learn during their lives, it seems to me that at the core there’s really two basic types of skills; the ones you can be instantly proficient at because you’re a natural or the ones that require a great deal of effort to learn because there is no easy or natural way to pick them up. Perhaps this is a gross oversimplification, but while catching some football Sunday afternoon I couldn’t help but think that a kid in a park can pick up a football and throw a perfect spiral their first time out. They simply have a natural inclination for playing the game. A knack for it. Maybe the kid is an all around gifted athlete or maybe they have a perfect motion or the ‘eye’ or a rifle for an arm, who knows… But their ability to utilize their skill comes without any training. They were simply born with an ability to play the game at a highly proficient level.

This skill we call motorcycle riding is the complete opposite. You can’ t instantly be fast, safe and competent on a motorcycle. You have to spend time learning those components in order to actually be ‘good’.

When all is said and done, riding a cycle is not an easy skill to learn either. It requires a great deal of investment – on a mental, an emotional and a financial level just to name a few. Most importantly however it’s not a skill you just ‘get’ all by yourself. You have to work at it. You have to engage. You have to find the right people and learn to ask them the right questions. In many ways it’s a skill that seems built on the foundation of other skill sets.

Same corner (turn 14), different track day, major change… That’s really the headline from Trackday : The Lightbulb Goes On… Well at least the basic gist… Two bits of text stand out to me as I re-read the entry…

The first is simply an articulation of why I wanted to learn to ride in the first place… This is motolove.

Every time I stop and picture myself out on the track with the 999 this amazingly glorious smirk emerges. It was undoubtedly one of the most remarkable riding days of my life and the afterglow buzz has been so intense that even now it’s hard for me to feel like I can honestly communicate to other people how amazing it felt to be out on the track with the bike. It was simply one of those intensely personal days when you’re pushing yourself and your bike harder and further than you thought you could or would ever go… And with each passing lap you find yourself in the midst of the most wonderfully romantic experience you can imagine as you and your bike become one and right before your eyes you witness yourself riding faster and more proficient than you ever have before.

The second bit, much further down in the post, is the more telling piece of text… Not so much because of the action of riding, but because of the slice of my thinking…

For the first time nothing felt ‘hard’ or ‘scary’ or ‘difficult’ about being on the bike on a racetrack. Instead I found myself surrounded by this sensation of security and riding suddenly felt instinctive and dare I say, ‘easy’. I went into the day unsure how good I was and ultimately I discovered I’ve become pretty decent. More than decent really. That probably sounds more competitive than I mean it to be, but ultimately if you take the sport of riding seriously I think it goes without saying that you have some sort of desire to get better and to improve. Ultimately improvement in this sport means speed. That’s one of the reasons we all ride.

What made Friday so amazing was that instead of feeling overwhelmed by the thought process involved in riding at speed - such as where to downshift and when to do it and how to do it smoothly - everything just happened. On its own. And while I’d like to say that I took some remarkable leap forward in picking out and hitting visual markers on the track, it was just the opposite. Perhaps it sounds egotistical – but then blogging about your riding exploits probably already crosses that line… so I digress - but I felt completely ‘in the zone’ as a professional athlete might say after a great game. I felt absorbed in ‘the ride’ and with the bike and corner after corner the fluidity of the day was astounding. Every motion just happened. Every effort felt controlled. Perhaps on a subconscious level I was highly involved with the details of riding, but none of that spilled over into the moment. I felt more free and more relaxed than I have in a very long time. Reading over that previous sentence, there’s a part of me that just shakes my head. It’s mind boggling that one can feel relaxed at 110 miles per hour, but its true.

And if there’s anything that stands out right now about Friday, it was the lack of thinking and the lack of feeling bogged down. The pure freedom of being out on the track and for the first time feeling like I could tap directly into the soul of the 999. And it’s an amazing soul…

A week later I had a completely new experience when I wrote a review of the new MV Agusta Brutale 910 : Show Me, Don’t Tell Me…

I suppose the review itself doesn’t shed much light into my mind, but riding that bike was fantastic… It just left you a different kind of glow…

As great as October had been, when November started life got crazy… And that’s pretty clear in my writing in Sunday Ride, Last Month & Another Duc Blog.

As usual the end of the year has brought a stream of utter chaos to my rather controlable life. I suspect it’s human nature that everyone tries to ‘finish’ things before New Years and therefore deadlines, approvals, and general work craziness picks up to seemingly record levels at this time of the year.

Because of the excess chatter at work I’ve been fairly good at neglecting the ‘ol blog… In all reality I’ve also been quite good at neglecting the bike too. Sunday was the first time in what felt like ages that I was able to get a ride in. And a relatively short one at that… It was a rather last minute deal since lately my ability to carve out time for the Duc has been anything but easy.

A few days later I penned what might be my best post of the year, titled Winter Light. It’s a mammoth entry as far as blogs go with some meaningful photos (well for me anyway)… But it was a magical day when I just got on the bike and went with no idea where I’d ended up… Eventually I did all of Route 33 and 166, which put me way above Santa Barbara… What I find interesting are a few key paragraphs that I think offer a very different sensability compared to the vast majority of posts from earlier in the year…

My friend and I were shooting shit about bikes when they asked the simplest of questions, ‘why do you write your blog?’

At the time it seemed like a rather innocent question and as I think back on our conversation that evening, I’m not quite sure I gave a particularly good response. I suspect that my inability to answer the given question was simply because I’d never thought to ask it. I was relatively caught off-guard and since that night, have been wondering if it’s possible to blog for this long and have never asked yourself why you do it?

Subsequently I’ve wondered if this is in fact the middle life crisis for a blog, when you become self aware and wonder for the first time, why on earth are you posting all of this information about yourself over and on the internet???

Later on in the same post I offered a peek into my thought process and rational for writing Twisting Asphalt…

there’s the reality that when all is said and done writing about motorcycles is pure fun. The kind that isn’t compromised by work, advertising, higher ups, other people’s opinions, or other requirements. It’s just what it is and that’s somehow enough. I’d say I’d do it for free but I already do so I’m not exactly sure what that proves other than to say that there’s something magical for me about writing about what you’re passionate about in life. Now I’m passionate about other things, but this is the ‘one’ if you know what I mean… Whether others find value in the writing is a completely subjective activity and one that I have no control over nor one I really want to have control over. I publish what amounts to a very personal scrapbook on a very public platform and it’s in a very niche genre. Italian Sportbikes. If you’re into American Cruisers I suspect you’ll read other blogs and that’s just fine with me.

My middle of November posts were far less inspiring, but I did enjoy the photos…

A few weeks later I signed up for my next track day adventure… This time at The Big Track at Willow Springs… You can read about my decision to sign up here.

A bit after signing up for another track day, I took a ride and wrote the post, Thanksgiving Canyon Magic.

What fascinates me about the post is that I’m no longer really posting about where I went and how to get there, but rather why… Doesn’t that seem like a much more pertinent question? Sure does to me…

There’s a magic in the Malibu Canyons. I swear it. You can’t touch it nor can you taste it, but you certainly can feel it. Especially on a day like today when its just you and the road shaking hands through every corner. Maybe it’s a Zen thing, but there’s something incredibly enchanting about riding roads that hug cliffs that look like they’ve fallen out of your imagination. Corner after corner it’s simply hard to ignore how special this place can feel when you least expect it. Its a spiritual exercise for gearheads.

Whoever built these canyon roads clearly must have understood the words ‘fun’ and ‘excitement’ because their very work surely does. There’s a natural thrill when riding here. A visceral sensation that knocks you back because at every corner the world opens up to yet another magnificent vista. And even if you’re like me and you ride these roads rather religiously, they never get old. They never get dull. Because they have a power that’s simply amazing. Especially when the entire coastline is completely devoid of traffic. Its a rare thing when the world feels like your playground. Today was that day.

A day later I snapped one of the coolest picts of the year in the post Heaven Spillth Over…

The same post also featured a rather introspective look at faith and my faith when riding a motorcycle…

Faith. It’s such a loaded word in today’s world. It means so many different things to so many people and to be honest I rarely have any desire to engage in any debate surrounding it. Yet today I was so powerfully struck by how instrumental a word, ‘faith’ is when you’re riding a motorcycle.

For example you have to have faith in the road surface, faith in your tires, faith in your riding ability. You have to trust other peoples decisions, such as other riders and other drivers. You even need to have faith in the last mechanic who worked on your bike even though that wasn’t today, but perhaps a month or two ago. The concept of faith is so intrinsically tied to riding it ought to be printed on our M class licenses. There simply isn’t another word that so aptly captures the amount of trust we as riders have to place in the unknown in order to believe that we’ll make it through a corner.

Clearly I’m on a rather metaphysical roll this month, there’s no other logical explanation for why such a ‘deep’ thought would pop into my head while riding today. It’s neither a revolutionary concept nor a wickedly witty topic to write about, yet I was very aware of my faith in the bike today. It’s a strange thought I’m sure, but heading into a corner I realized that on some level I tell myself that the tires will hold because I have faith in a rather nebulous concept called the contact patch. It’s a concept that I can neither truly see nor feel. I simply believe it’s there. I believe it’s going to work. And corner after corner today I found myself wondering why sometimes it seems so hard to apply that same sort of logic in my faith towards the unknown to other non-riding topics. Why does my faith in the tires holding cease once I get off the bike and why can’t I transfer that learned response or perhaps even learned knowledge to subjects that don’t require a two-wheeled vehicle? It seems like something that shouldn’t be so hard.

When the end of the month rolled around I was back at Willow, this time at a Trackday : Pushing Limits…

There’s a lot in the post, but the part I enjoy the most on a re-read is the following bit of text…

On a racetrack everything changes. You have the opportunity to open it up all the way - for what feels like an absolute eternity and at a place like Willow Springs that eternity lasts longer then you ever thought was possible. Whatever your conception of eternity is gets completely revamped. When your mental clock hits zero – that exact moment when you’d normally would start rolling off the throttle – you’re just getting started. There’s another mile of track to go. It’s an unreal experience because it fights so much of what you’ve learned over the years. In the past few days since getting back from Willow it has occurred to me that no one ever takes you out when you’re learning to ride and says go as fast as you can and then slow down. No one asks you to run the bike all the way up to its limit. That’s just not the way riding is or should be taught. But a trip to a place like Big Willow radically alters your perception of riding. Because it teaches the untaught. It expands your mind and lets be honest, your skill.

In early December I wrote another review, this time about the Ducati S2R 1000 Monster : The Definition of Fun…

It’s funny how where you’re at in the real world clearly can affect what you write…

Coming through the corners I find myself thinking that there’s an amazing sense of simplicity and it’s marvelous. It’s also a concept I thought I’d outgrown. Not because I wanted to but because I had to. The real world is inevitably filled with complications. Work. Family. Car payments. You name it. Nothing feels simple anymore. Life, it seems, has forced me to grow up. It forces all of us to grow up. Yet this wildly wicked amusement park ride reminds me of a time when the world was just simple and fun.

By the middle of December the push of the real world seemed to fully intersect my riding and writing when I wrote the entry The Mortality of Riding…

Motorcycles have such a unique ability to make us go places. What was once simply a form of cheap transportation now exists in a realm of secondary purpose. It’s not only about moving from Point A to Point B but also mentally going from one spot to another. Bikes have a unique quality that allows us to be whisked away from where we are and pushed into new and dare I say better places to reside. They cleanse our minds and free our souls for yet another upcoming workweek. They allow us to breath deeper and think clearer. They give us a perspective that’s not insulated by plastic, metal or glass. Rather they immersed us in the outside world. People ask me all the time, what is it that makes motorcycles attractive? What’s the draw? What brings me back weekend after weekend to ride canyon after canyon and go in what amounts to large circles around Los Angeles?

Most of the time I tend to tell people that I enjoy the ability to get ‘lost’ when I’m on a motorcycle. To get away. To remove myself from the real world for portions of a weekend – perhaps fractions - so that I can come back refreshed. It’s an odd concept to say the least, to lose yourself in something that requires total focus and dedication so that you can forget about more pressing issues. Personally the more I think about riding while I am riding the less I drift off to other mental places. Places that scare me, agitate me, anger me, annoy me, worry me, and even frighten me.

I’m going to the take the giant leap that if you’re reading this post, you’ve probably read the most of the recent ones already so covering them again seems a bit redundant in my mind. Perhaps they’re best saved for next year’s year in review even though they fall in this calendary year… But before I depart and wrap this year of my life up I wanted to finish with one of my favorite posts…

MotorMilt’s Back…

It’s not really the words from the post that get me, but the sentiment that’s at hand… MM is still not 100%, but it’s nice to finally seem him getting close. With the rainy season about to start and the last bit of holidays still left to get through, I’m not sure when we’ll ride together next but I do know it’s going to happen… And after riding for most of the year without him around just knowing that feels really good as we stand around staring ‘06 down…

Personally having never been a great journal keeper up until this point in my life, I find the experience of going backwards almost as fascinating as going forwards. Rereading most of these entries offers something I’ve never really experienced, the ability to relive moments in time with far more critical distance. I find myself keenly aware of a certain rawness in many of the posts. As I imagine most regular readers have figured out by now, the vast majority of these entries are rather top of the mind experiences. Sometimes that leads to very visceral writing that – at least for me – almost lives and breaths, yet it also leads to some rather oddly constructed sentences, a fair share of typos, and some abysmal grammatical errors. Yet somehow none of that matters to me. On a personal level I find great value in the read exactly because of how unfinished it sometimes feels. They’re not highly processed or restrained writing, but instead very direct slices of my life from very particular moments in time. Sitting here now I find the ability to relive these passages remarkable if only because it’s not everyday that you can catch up with what your inner most thoughts or feelings were from any given ride in a matter of a few minutes or even hours.

After reading all of these posts I’m also struck by how fortunate a year this has been and how much I’m looking forward to getting next year started. It’s time to get going, time to plan the next track day, time to push the Duc a bit further and time to ulitmately continue to expand my mind with this thing called riding a motorcycle… I hope you all enjoyed the read… All the best & happy new year…

Dylan

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