Growing up I always appeared to be the ‘normal’ kid. I was the guy who ran in the right circles and studied hard, the one who played ball and generally did the things you’re supposed to do to get on the ‘right track’. The ‘correct track’. The track that other adults have previously defined and the one which forces you towards a life that society says is successful and important. Yet for all the pretense and appearance, nobody ever asked me what I wanted out of life. They never asked who I thought I might wanted to be.

Instead it was all pre-planned. Laid out in neat little intervals. In punch card like fashion. Yet I always knew that my pre-adult life was a total and complete lie. I was faking it and biding my time because I knew that what was in my heart was different then society’s prescribed norm. The way my mind worked was counter intuitive to the ‘right track’. What interested me existed beyond the regular and outside of the day to day. Deep in my soul I knew I wasn’t the perfect kid or the premiere student because I was a day dreamer.

From an early age my mind liked to ramble. It enjoyed the fantasy of the ‘what if’ scenario. I spent hours imaging what might be or at least what could be and I honestly can’t even fathom how much time I spent when I was younger peering off into the distance picturing what might come next. Wondering ‘what if’ and ‘what might be’. Visualizing the future — my future — and wishing it’d just get here sooner. Just happen. Because let’s face it there’s only so much a kid can do when they’re lacking a license or the legality to drink.

For the past several weeks, the question of how one discovers what they desire for themselves and their future has been constantly weighing on my mind.

Perhaps because in just a few days I’ll turn thirty.

It’s an obvious milestone of sorts. A nice healthy round number that along with its cohorts twenty, forty, fifty and sixty, signifies far more then just a given amount of time spent on the planet. These round number years are numerical harbingers of the steps ahead. Markers that denote where you are in life and where you expected to be - both to yourself and from the watchful gaze of your compatriots.

At the moment I find myself taking quite a bit of personal inventory. This particular birthday - this grand marker - seems to have hit harder then most. Certainly harder then the last several ticks on the clock. While others in my age bracket appear to have it all figured out, I find myself continually coming back to one very basic question - is this all there is in life? Is this as good as it gets?

I say that fully aware that I dig my life. I enjoy what I do. I love how it’s played out. But I can’t help but feel like there has to be more that’s out there - more challenge, more survival, more experience, just more emotionally engaging adventures to be had.

This begs one to ask how navigate the waters and still allow yourself to dance among the stars in the sky? How do you advance in a way which suits your favor and also makes you happy? How do you move forward in a way that interests you? These are questions which continue to make me wonder - they are things that stir the pot and repeatedly make me contemplate what it is that I want out of life from this point forward.

So being the moto-lusting two wheel addict that I am, I did what I probably shouldn’t have done to commemorate turning thirty - I bought a brand new Ducati ST3.

Was it a financially prudent decision? Probably not. The most logical? Hardly. Emotionally gratifying? Absolutely. If life is an adventure then it only seemed appropriate to own a bike that can take you on the journey that lies ahead.

That’s a quick and dirty way to describe what happened, but in reality the decision to pick up a sport touring motorcycle in addition to the 1098 has a lengthy backstory, some of which is not important for the purpose of this blog, but the basic gist is that I’ve been thinking of adding another bike to the stable off and on for quite awhile.

But like many decisions in life, I delayed the inevitable for one overarching reason - finances. As we all know, motorcycles are an expensive habit to have. They cost far more then just the out the door price at the dealership. There’s servicing, tires, riding outfits, and any number of other hidden places to spend your hard earned coin. What swung the ST3 thought process into action was an absolutely smoking deal at GP Motorcycles in San Diego.

As most long time readers know I usually do all my Ducati related business at Pro Italia in Glendale, but in this particular case the numbers were simply too hard to ignore. GP had a left over ‘06 ST3 sitting on the floor and they were willing to deal. Knowing that I dug the bike (see my previous ST3S Review ) and with the ST line rumored to have hit EOL status, it seemed like a now or never proposition. Either pick up the bike or perhaps never again have the opportunity to own a brand new version of what I personally consider Ducati’s best sport touring motorcycle. So I did what all heavily addicted motorcyclists do, I found a way to rationalize why doing this made sense.

Internally this discussion started with where I now reside. A full fledged sportbike simply doesn’t seem like the optimal bike to ride all of the time. Several days ago I wrote a short bit, titled Riding in Molten Lava, which in some ways was the tipping point. The moment when you come to terms with the fact that you’ve already made a decision subconsciously and your waking self is just the last part of you to find out.

Beyond logistics however stands a far more important rational - I simply miss taking long winding journeys up and down the coast of California on a bike. While I love the 1098S and think it’s a phenomenal sportbike, clearly it was not designed to travel hundreds of miles per day. Taking that bike up the coast would be an extremely painful trip that I have no desire to ever make. And while I truly love and enjoy the trackday experience, they tend to come and go in one very long day. They are events that are oftentimes over before you know it.

Multi-day road trips on the other hand have a truly unique staying power. They last well after you’ve returned because they resonate in a very different way. Taking a long journey on a bike allows you to feel a sense of removal that is exponentially greater then blurring through canyon curves on a demonic sportbike. They are personal events which force you to put down the cell phone, ignore the voicemail and unplug the laptop for days at a time. It’s an experience that I used to greatly enjoy on previous sport-tourers and subsequently find myself missing. Perhaps that’s because by their very nature lengthy trips take away the creature comforts you’ve grown accustomed to and instead wear you down in a very basic and primeval manor. They beat you up mentally and they beat you up physically until what remains is the desire to ride for the sake of the ride. Nothing else matters. Not lap times or lean angle. Not gigantic horsepower numbers or the latest and greatest ‘fill-in the blank’. Inside it’s the drifting moment that you live for, that time when you can enjoy the countryside, the ocean, the coast, the hills and the mountains in a completely undisturbed manor — because let’s face it you’re a million miles away from the nearest cell tower and in all honesty have nothing else to do but slow things down and enjoy the ride that lies ahead.

The next logical extension of this thought process highlights the one thing that sportbikes can not offer - the chance to discover the unexpected. On a sportbike there are only so many public roads that are truly enjoyable, even in my beloved Santa Monica Mountains. There is just a finite amount of curvaceous puck-grinding excitement to be had. But on a sport tourer you give yourself a thousand possibilities at seemingly every turn. Any long distance trip I’ve ever taken has always had a magical detour of some kind, whether due to CalTrans or just good advice from other riders I’ve met along the way. Ironically it’s these detours that I remember the best. They are the roads that lead to the memories that I keep coming back to, the images that are frozen inside my mind which illicit joy and give birth to the greatest stories. They are the roads that lately I find myself day-dreaming about; the asphalt that seems off the beaten path, outside of the ‘norm’ and far, far away from the ‘right track’ for my life.