Awkward Dance Partners - The Ducati ST3 & MV Agusta F4 up The California Coast
California Route 33 above Ojai
At first there’s one. A second later comes another… And then all hell breaks loose, as a cascade of perspiration rolls forward with vengeance. It’s the first real tangible clue that you’re getting close; close to the middle of nowhere and close to California’s Central Valley in the middle of summer.
Coming out of yet another series of contiguous sweeping corners, you feel the slight ache in your wrist - because it’s already been a long day - but instead of falling victim to your inner demons you press on. Ignore the pain. There’s just too much bounty to be had here. The sirens of an empty road are far to captivating as they call out.
So you roll the throttle back. A minuet movement in a landscape of grandeur. Once again feel the bike pick itself up and hustle forward as it shoots up the short straightaway that connects this twist with that twist and a moment later you remember to exhale before getting right back on the brakes, settling the suspension back down and diving into yet another arched asphalt form of serenity.
It’s a fast paced dance done with a mountain top. You throttle up, you throttle down. You duck, you dive, you pick it back up. You brake. Perhaps you even continue breathing.
And as the pace quickens so to does the transformation. Not of riding but rather life.
What had been a scenic route splitting bundled patches of pine tree derivatives quickly evolves. In minutes, or maybe just heartbeats, you rip through another banked corner and crest a 5,160-foot summit of dreams.
On the other side lies a stark and desolate arena. The average visitor might think it far to remote and well past dull to bother with, yet for an actively engaged motorist it is an untroubled paradise full of unique forms of individual adventure and challenge.
Welcome to the Southern edge of California’s Central Valley.
The landscape is harsh and dry, built on brush and cattle, tumbleweeds and water prudent oak trees. A place far removed from the concrete jungle and yet fairly dependant on it for survival. To live or work here is to languish in an alternate version of society, more Steinbeck then Grisham, where the quality of the water pump in your pick-up truck is far more important then the latest magazine cover girl.
It is also a place that time has forgotten and yet still hit hard nonetheless. Where every hundred miles empty retail spaces battle big-box stores for supremacy and conflict runs deep, which somehow encapsulates both the best and the worst of the Golden State all in one place. Everywhere you look the hopes, the dreams, the challenges, the exploration, and even dire hopelessness are blatantly apparent trends.
Yet life still goes on. Moves forward. Boiling upwards, inch by inch, in a thousand degree melting pot of that exists on the fringe of civilization.
A day later I swing the other extreme, subtly freezing as I watch seagulls dance just a short fragment off the coastline and the last drip of coffee tries its best to push past the lingering memories of a long last night. A quick wick the throttle and a different beast fires forward as a bucket of aspirin takes hold. The engine’s suggestive notes find instant traction. On the road and in my mind. Each millimeter of piston movement brings out a louder, deeper, more hideous wailing. A sound so strong it forcibly removes the thumping headache and matter of factly tosses it down on the road. For all to see and hear and trample. It’s the kind of evocative auditory experience that only comes from a bullish inline four cylinder that’s cracking its raw fists on the skull of an open road… And absolutely laughing about it afterwards.
Just like that I’m awake — But better yet, I’m alive.
Thanks in large part to the combination and contradiction of two completely distinctive types of riding – One which elicits sheer passion while the other remotely suggests it. Together they bend the rules of life and their associated meanings; forcing the yellow lines that divide us to vanish as the cool damp early morning fog evaporates in a mere moment.
This is a radical departure from my usual trips up the California Coastline — because I’ve never cruised up the coast on a true thoroughbred before…
Logically I’ve always held the belief that inside every machine is the perfect tool for a particular job and it’s foolish to ask a sportbike to do a touring task. Conceptually the idea of taking a full-blown sportbike up the coast has always seemed rather suicidal at best. The reasons and rationales range from the physical toll they take on a rider all the way to the unforeseen mechanical hiccups that could, and often times do, occur with trackday weapons are used on public roads.
Yet the older I get the less inclined I am to allow logic to infiltrate an arena of passion. If for no other reason then everything else in the day-to-day of the real world is completely and one hundred perfectly logical. And somewhere deep inside I keeping trolling over one basic core thought – If not now, when?
A half hour later while shooting up CA-46, which is an inland oasis of an open road, the traffic is surprisingly light for an upcoming MotoGP weekend that will take place in Monterey. Brilliantly crisp vineyards fly by on both sides as we burn through California’s Central Coast wine country on two rather awkward dancing partners; the old man’s brand new MV Agusta F4 and my trusty Ducati ST3. Neither is the perfect 1,000-mile adventurer yet they might just be the most fun for a joint trip covering a collection of remarkably empty and remote curving roads.
Coming around the next kink in California’s landscape of tarmac armor, I flash backwards eleven days and think how ridiculous this all must seem. A little less then two weeks ago the old man and I hit the track where one might have thought that we would have gotten our fill of getting our rocks off on the fast paced sportbike ethos. Yet we didn’t. Instead a strange thing happened on the way home.
We decided to let go of logic and instead starting formulating a plan entirely designed by passion.
The F4 was just too enjoyable – and to be honest, probably too new - to leave in the garage… So we left Buttonwillow openly talking about ratcheting up the stakes on our coming California coastal adventure. Could it make it Monterey? Could we survive it if it did?
We had no idea.
But it was a gamble that seemed worth taking. So we did something that even now strikes me as somewhat flawed. We left a perfectly good and capable sport-tourer in the garage, the BMW K1200RS, and instead flew the coop with one full-blown sportbike and one seriously sporty sport-tourer.
Our plan; A multiday escapade over and through some of California’s finest routes, starting with Central Valley staples CA-33 and CA-58, followed by the more coastal CA-41, CA-46, and inland avenues of chance G14 and G17, and then finally the mother of all great California roads, CA-1, which is better known as the Pacific Coast Highway. And that was before we started all over and did it again in reverse.
It’s a journey that over the past few years I’ve had the pleasure to attempt several different times – The old man however hasn’t been as fortunate for a variety of reasons, most of which center around time or the lack thereof. But motorcycles are about more then just tracks and canyons; they’re also about escapism as well. So once we committed to attending the GP races at Laguna this year we decided it was time to take a different kind of journey together – a more mellow, free-flowing amble North, which traversed both dreamlike scenery as well as our collective past.
Entering Lockwood, we stop at the aptly named Lockwood Store for a BSB break (butt-smoke-bathroom) and snap a few pictures. It’s a slightly surreal experience. Because we’re in effect retracing our previous steps. Our first great California road trip adventure rolled right through here and it’s surprisingly odd to stand in exactly the same spot you did eight or nine years ago in a seemingly remote part of the world and realize that while nothing has changed here, everything else in life has.
And then there are the bikes…
Eight or nine years ago we rolled through here on two BMW R1100S sport-tourers. At the time they seemed like the epitome of the perfect riding companions. Looking at the ST3 and the F4 that seems like a long, long time ago.
“This is a very different trip,” MotorMilt says, while running his hand over the tank of the F4, “and we’ve come a long way since then”.
All I can do is acknowledge the sentiment with a smirk as he smiles and says, “These are just a hell of a lot more fun”…
Both bikes offer a more fluid system of travel then the Beemers did; yet when compared to each other they are radically different animals. The ST presents a unique blend of both speed and semi-comfort while pushing the sport side of the sport-touring equation to the forefront of the category’s inherent compromise between the two extremes.
The F4 on the other hand is completely uncompromising to say the least. It’s a full-blown racing bike that just happens to have mirrors and lights. Everything about it is harsh. Hard. And uncomfortable. The footpegs feel like they’re stacked against the exhaust, the seat is the antichrist of plush, and the only seating position that feels remotely comfortable is a completely tuck.
Yet what this bike lacks in creature comforts it more then makes up for in wicked acceleration, awesome exhaust notes and remarkable handling. The bike just feels completely planted. All the time. It’s a freakishly secure feeling that’s night and day different then any of the Ducati Superbikes I’ve ridden, including the 1098S. On the F4 it feels as if you’ve got a holy ghost lingering above and watching your every move as you attack each successive corner. The chassis feels so solid that seems damn near impossible to upset it unless you’ve done something completely idiotic.
Of course the irony of idiocy on this bike is that it’s only a throttle advance away.
Twist your right wrist and you thrust the machine forward so fast that even a GPS enable iPhone accelerometer has trouble keeping up. The bike just hauls. Flat out and with idiocy in tow.
Just in case the warp speed disappearance of the landscape surrounding you confuses your visual sensory perception, there’s also a series of auditory battlefield explosions as well. The four organ-like pipes in the back bellow out such a nasty, evil, downright scary wail that both big and little critters alike flee in fear.
Stacked next to the 1098S it’s a very different riding experience. Far less fluid and far more point and shoot. Where the ’10’ feels torquey, the F4 feels defiant. Making such a loud and demonic noise that it makes mothers across the country to cringe in terror. The 1098S lets you delicately dance into and out of apexes where as the F4 cracks heads like sledgehammer, never losing sight of the fact that it’s got somewhere else to be.
An hour later I am somewhere else, as I take a slow drag from the smoke and suck down my eighth vitamin enriched energy drink of the day. Glancing at the digital clock in the dash it’s hard to fathom that it’s not even noon yet — Already my sense of time and space has been lost, much like contemporary society’s awareness of the true roots of California.
Looking out at a collection of wide-open fields surrounded by rolling hills and mammoth mountains in the distance, the old man smirks, “It always amazes me how empty most of California is,” he says before matching my puff of smoke with his own, “I think we tend to forget about that sometimes”…
He’s right; the enduring legacy of California isn’t the marvelous technological advancements, the Disneyland theme parks or the beacon like draw of the Hollywood scene that continually draws thousands of young dreams each year, rather the permanent fixture of the State is what’s missing in a pristine undisturbed landscapes. There are no hands-free gizmos sprouting out of anyone’s ear nor the rushed sensibility to trade your gas guzzler in for a hybrid so you can sleep better at night, instead just an honest panorama that’s not all that far removed from our pre-technology existence.
California’s Central Valley isn’t just physically at the state’s core but emotionally as well. This is the land of classic California virtue. Where dreams drift in the soft summer breeze and potential is allowed to amble undisturbed until it’s ready to come to fruitarian. What exists here today is completely indicative of what used to exist everywhere and the more you peer over the landscape, the clearer it becomes that something tragically got lost in our society’s evolution from the past to the present.
I’m not completely sure what that exactly is but each time I step foot in this Valley there is a sense of peacefulness and comfort that you could spend a lifetime searching for in the big cities and never find. A sensibility of hard work and determination scratched on people’s faces that echo’s the founding of this great nation not the current sense of elite entitlement broadcast nightly on E!
Six days after setting out I’m flush with fear when entering LA County again. While I’m still physically on the bike, I’m no longer not actually riding it. Instead I’ve already made the mental leap towards re-entering the ‘real world’. Something I feel inherently loath to do right now, but I know I must. Because that’s the way it works when you grow up. When you have bills to pay and tasks to do.
As the traffic thickens, I feel my lower back start to tighten up. The muscles squeezing the nerves for all there net worth. It’s not a comfortable sensation by any means, but then the last leg of a thousand mile adventure almost always ends in some sort of ailment.
Yet today the physical toll that the trip has taken is the least of my worries.
Rather it’s the never-ending game of mental catch up that I’m frantically playing that’s drawing my attention as I try to deduce what I’ve now got to get done while still expressively coming to grips with where I’ve just been. What I’ve just seen. Who I might be.
It’s an inherently unstable moment to say the least and one that leaves me wondering why the ride home always feels both completely premature in its arrival and yet long over due at the same time?
But then I suppose all great rides ultimately are comprised of a mixed bag of emotions. On one hand, you never want to see them end and yet on the other hand there’s definitely a physical and mental ceiling that you hit. Especially when one of the bikes you’ve chosen for the particular task is the completely wrong tool for the job from a logical standpoint.
Of course common sense only gets you so far in this world and in the space of the past eleven days, from the trackday at Buttonwillow to this trip up the coast, the old man and I have gone from one extreme of the motorcycle persona to the other, battling and conquering the vast differences between logic and insanity.
Without a doubt my non-riding friends would say that taking a bike, any bike, to a track is an insane endeavor. Yet my guess is that they would completely understand the appeal of a good ol’fashion road trip – even if it is on a bike.
Yet as the road buckles down and the traffic comes to a halt, it occurs to me that these two divergent extremes of the motorcycle experience are exactly the opposite. The time we spent at Buttonwillow was all about the application of logic. Perfecting the art form of proficient riding. Taking two Italian motorcycles on a thousand mile journey up and down the coast on the other hand isn’t just an adventure – It’s also just plain nuts.
And it’s also a personal fantasy come to life.
For all the times I’ve ridden up and down the coastline, I never done it the way I’ve really wanted to – on a full blown sportbike that has a wicked engine, killer brakes and instinctive handling. Instead I’ve always bent to convention or at least logic and taken a sport-tourer of one kind or another. To finally make this sort of fantastical mental image come to life is something that’s worth any and all residual back pain and leaves me thinking that perhaps the axiom of the right tool for the right job is incorrect at its core. Maybe, just maybe, sometimes we need to choose the wrong tool for the right job in order to make dreams come true.
MotorMilt’s Birthday Surprise
Every so often those random cogitators and somewhat divergent particulars swimming around inside your head can come together in such a way that you stumble on to an idea that seems so right, so timely, so true, and so unequivocally correct, that no matter what might stand in your way you just know deep down in the soul of your soul that it not only makes sense but is something that you’ve just got to do…
Several weeks back while rolling around in bed at 2 AM, with a mind full of a thousand different thoughts running in a million different directions, I found myself replaying all the various bits from the day and in the darkness of the night it dawned on me that it was time to set the ultimate secret-ops plan in motion — to surprise the old man, MotorMilt, with a once in a lifetime kind of birthday present. The kind of out-of-left field shocker that on one hand doesn’t seem real (nor necessary but that is another thought for a different day) and yet on the other hand crystallizes in a tangible form all the words one wishes to express to someone else about their lifetime of selflessness, security and compassion.
You see the old man is not only my father but also my best friend — It is a relationship that I thank my lucky stars for on a daily basis and one which transcended the more typical parental-child logic or rational quite sometime ago. If every action has a reaction, then every act I’ve taken through out my life is directly based on a concrete foundation of logic and love that he helped mold. When I look in the mirror or perhaps more importantly backwards in the past, I cringe at the thought of what it would have been like to pedal up the hill of life without him — not that I couldn’t have but rather I wince at all the memories that would have been lost, the life lessons that I would have had to learn the hard way and the core, basic human interaction that I would have missed out on. Our lives, individually and collectively, have not been all spades all the time by any stretch of the imagination, but rather as I believe is true for the vast majority of folks, a series of staggered ups and downs that together represent what life is really about — the gradual up tick on the timeline of life.
Of course the irony is that up until my teenage years I barely knew the man. He was a ghost for all practical purposes, running around the world at the Network News level, traveling to far off destinations for world changing events that a child simply can’t comprehend. While I was screwing around in middle school or the like, he was watching the Berlin Wall fall as it happened, broadcasting bits of information from then closed-societies such as Russia, Cuba, Manila and the Philippines. In an era when domestic threats were easily definable and the news was still seemingly important appointment viewing television, he was part of a unique group that dropped what they were doing at a moments notice to chase the adrenaline kick that comes from being a witness to history. Of course to do that successfully one has to put everything else on the backburner - that’s how it works and that’s the lifestyle you lead - you know it going in when you get the gig. Yet somewhere along the line the old man broke from the mold, so-to-speak, and stepped back. Making a conscious decision to pull out and put his dreams on hold for mine — it’s a basic philosophy and one which has never wavered from that day forward, which in an era when personal ego rules I find rather incredible.
With the hustle and bustle of the rat race now squarely in the rear view mirror he set his attention towards me, not only helping in every way imaginable to give my dreams the chance to succeed but also setting a love for things with engines in motion. He consciously devised a gearhead-based strategy to bring us together, which not only taught me valuable life lessons for then and now but also cleverly created common ground between us. It was in many ways the beginning of the shorthand instinctive language that we share together and it’s amazing to me just how strong you can forge a friendship when you’re wrenching under an oil dripping straight-six with someone else.
Yet creating a motor-based playground was just the start. One of MotorMilt’s more magnanimous acts was always letting me do the actual wrenching. Much like today, he was there to support the task but not take it over. Teaching as opposed to ‘doing’ has been just one of Milt’s trademarks over the span of my life, yet I think it speaks to a fundamental truth about him. He always seems to put others ahead of himself. Sometimes, as happens in life, you begin to take brilliant attributes like this for granted and while I consider myself a thoughtful individual, I feel fairly certain that I pale in comparison to the altruistic standard that he’s set.
When you really get to it, he is the rock that I depend on every single day and while at times we have our arguments or disagreements, they never linger. They never twist from one subject to another or infiltrate other parts of life. There are no head games or hidden meanings. No darkness where there should only be light. Yet words, whether spoken or written, can’t adequately describe or detail what he means to me, what he’s done for me, who he is or what he stands for. These are the big ticket issues and they’re always paid on time and in full.
So with the old man’s birthday approaching, I thought if ever there was a time to condense all the thoughts and feelings one can’t easily say into the personification of a dream — his dream — now was the time.
Ever since we got back from the Italian portion of the Twist The Throttle shoot, whenever we’d shoot the shit or have an ad hoc bike discussion, Milt’s mind would seemingly drift to the MV Agusta F41000R. He’d talk about the craftsmanship, the details they got right, the emotions the bike presents, the way it felt like to ride. Time and again it felt like he was not describing a mere sportbike but rather the gal of your dreams that got away. And it was also something I knew he’d never get for himself. That’s simply not how he was wired. And while neither one of us needs a new motorcycle at the moment that’s not really the point. Rather it was time to help him live one of his fantasies… So happy birthday old man, may this be your golden chariot…
* Before I sign off the night, I’d like to throw a big shout out to Bill Nation and the boys at ProItalia — they got it on this one, understanding the situation, keeping the surprise and making everything easy. Thank you.
MotorMilt’s Back!
It’s been a long time coming but today MotorMilt made his weekend riding return. As most of you know it’s been a long haul. He’s been out for nearly six months and his last real ride which was an amazing 350+ mile jaunt up the coast and through the hills of Santa Barbara County wine country. It was such a long and glorious ride in fact that I ended up having to split the write up into two parts; Sunday’s Sport Touring Ride Part 1 and Part 2. Knowing how much he loves riding, I can’t fathom what it has been like for him to be out of comission for so long. So while today’s ride was a relatively short loop - Old Topanga Canyon to Mulholland to the Agoura Deli and back via Latigo Canyon - it was an important step towards the real mark of recovery, riding without issue and limit.
Now to be perfectly fair dealing with an injured rider is no picnic – especially during the peak riding season. I’ve heard countless tales of riding exploits and also a fair amount of worry about if he’d ever ride his 999 again. Thankfully today seems to serve notice that both of those (and many other tales) might have been a bit premature. Hopefully my riding life will now get back to normal.
Guest Editorial : MotorMilt’s View of Trackday
[Editors Note:] This morning MotorMilt, my old man and weekend riding companion, and I were shooting the shit when he happened to mention that he enjoyed the CLASS course so much that he felt absolutely compelled to write Reg, Gigi and the gang at CLASS to thank them for the experience. After taking a few minutes to read his note I thought that it might be worthwhile to publish it here on Twisting Asphalt because perhaps it would be of interest for others of you out there who are thinking about attended a trackday with someone like Pridmore. [Editors Note #2:] I should also add that in the time since I posted my thoughts about our track experience a number of folks have written in asking for MotorMilt’s take… Well here it is… In a manor of speaking…
Reg,
I just got home after attending your March 28, 2005 CLASS session at The Streets of Willow. It was the third time I’ve taken your course and wanted to share some thoughts with you.
Like many people I had ridden a little in high school and then stopped because life simply became too busy. After college, I decided I wanted to learn how to fly, and got my private pilot’s license. That too stopped, as work, and family became all consuming.
Fast forward 20 years and a friend rides over to my house on his new motorcycle. Reminded me of how much fun they were and soon I had purchased a 500cc used Honda standard. I traded that on an 1100cc used Honda and finally, in 1990 I bought my first ever ‘brand new bike’—a BMW K75RT. That’s what I rode at my first CLASS course at what was then Sears Point. I remember thinking it was kind of a big boat for a track session even though one of your instructors, perhaps it was Fred, was passing everyone on a huge Full Dress Tourer.
Fast forward another 10 years, and I had gone from the K75RT to a K100RS and then an R1100S, which I rode at my second CLASS course, this one at Laguna Seca. At the time, I thought it was a real sportbike, especially compared to what I had started on.
Each time I took your course I was impressed with how much I learned and how much more confident I continued to become as a rider. So last year, I finally got the bike of my dreams, a bright red Ducati 999. That’s what I rode yesterday at Willow and it was an absolute blast.
I have never aspired to be the fastest rider on the track. My goal each time I’ve taken your course was to learn more and raise my own ability levels as a rider. And each time, that’s exactly what has happened.
Before arriving at Willow I read and re-read your book to help focus my mind on control, smoothness, and planning ahead. I do not have the ability to ‘hang a knee’ but yesterday I did find myself shifting body positions and weight, getting my head turned and level, looking through the corner, relaxing the arms, and many of the other things you teach.
I can’t thank you and all of your instructors enough for your guidance and inspiration over the years. All of you provide knowledge and insight without any sense of criticism, often in one-on-one settings that really help to drive the points home because the teaching is tailored to just me and my particular motorcycle. For example, the 999 is geared really tall, and at one point yesterday one of your instructors had me follow him off the track and talk about gear selection at various points on the course. His advice was keyed specifically to me and my 999. I got back out there and wow did it make a difference.
I don’t know why over time I have gravitated from standards, to full dress tourers, and ultimately an outright sportbike but I think what I’ve learned at CLASS has played a major role in that evolution. What I’ve learned has certainly made me a better and safer rider and I want to thank you, Gigi, and all your instructors for helping me to continue to learn.
Your CLASS courses have also increased my enjoyment of the sport of motorcycling over the years. I can’t wait for the next CLASS course and frankly, with the amount of outright fun I have on the 999, I’ll be back sooner rather than later.
Best Regards,
MotorMilt
