Coast to Coast (and back?) with an Italian Supermodel

I'm envious of you, Schneller! You have the goal in front, whereas mine is mostly behind.

You have passed "equipoise", the point in a journey where further travelling starts taking you closer to your origin. It is a position often pondered, whether pointless or not.

Barber is on my list of places to see! Some of my friends on tampasportbikes.com go up there for track days pretty often, and amateur racing as well. Would love to do a track day there, but I don't think a ninja 250 is the best bike for that track! LOL

Keep the RR coming!

Uh, a 250 is a great bike for Barber IMHO. This track , when built, was touted as purpose built for World Superbike and Moto GP. Then after a testing the AMA started having races there.
The World said no. Not long enough on the straights to get the top speed to wow the crowds, though that doesn't keep them away from Laguna Seca.
I've raced there several times with AHRMA. It is an extremely fun track. It flows bettter than most any other track I've been on . There is only one really slow corner and it catches people out frequentlly.
If you can make a track day and be with a group with similar speeds , you'll likely enjoy.

That slow corner is amazing if you know how to work it correctly. I've passed several cars on the first laps as they go for the brakes just earlier than required. You can use that downhill braking zone to your advantage and...more or less divebomb the corner. Scares the hell out of the workers though. :)

A lot of groups wanted Mr. Barber to reconfigure the backstriaght to get rid of the kink. Personally I love the kink. If they reconfigured the corner leading onto the front straight to make it, well, less of a turn they would get the speeds they wanted on the front straight.

Oh by the way, all of the motorcycles on display will start and turn laps on track.

Never even knew about Barber till I read the last post; now it's on my bucket list. Can't be many places int the world you can see a Britten and Super Mono in the same room.

The madness continues:













Ignore Can AM:

BTW, the imperfections in the pics are due to the Photobucket conversion process. If anyone wants crystal-clear pics, PM me.

Funny thing about Alabama. I didn't think it was so bad. But everywhere I went people asked where I was from (Ducati motorbikes are not so common). When I responded that I was on a road trip seeing the country there was a unanimous reply: "so why are you here?" Well, Barber was fookin' cool. And if you're living in a place you hate so much that you question why strangers are visiting I'd suggest you either get the fuck out or suck it up and realize it ain't so bad.

That's what I thought before Mobile. I'd driven through Mobile before, but never stayed. I had fond memories of Malbis, AL, (your narrator says with a grin), so thought a night in Mobile would allow me to meet up with my dad (who lives in the FL panhandle), and give me a taste or real Alabama slamma living.

(Long exhale.)

Slamma it was. Anyone who's been waiting with baited breath for fortuitous experiences to turn bad turn the pages no further. This is where the chimera breathes some nasty fumes into the R/R.

I've stayed in some shitholes. One unmentioned goal of this journey of mine is to look at the world through Iris-colored spectacles (never done that before), which means I've glossed over a lot of the bad parts of this journey. There's no fun in reporting sandy beige or salamander experiences, and there's no fun in renting headspace to boredom. Dr. J's yacht in NY, the tranquility of Colorado, a drunken sofa in MN, sublimity in Martha's Vineyard--all of those are far more worthy of QWERTY attention than the finger-down-the-throat experiences I've devoted no time to. But Mobile was so bad it demands documentation.

So after Barber: Mobile. The denizens of Alabama seemed unanimous in thier distaste of their state. I didn't quite understand until I arrived at my new apartment in Mobile. Long story short--southern hospitality is either great or it's disgusting.



Yes--that was the bed, upon arrival, complete with 'wet towel on the pillow' action. Avoiding a CCC (cum covered comforter) always ranked high on my list of priorities when checking into a room, but I'd never prepared myself for a situation like this.

To make matters worse, Mobile, AL, was where my dad and I met up. I'd had six months of roaches and dirtbag motels to desensitize me to germs. But he walked right off the street into it with no warning. His bed looked like this:



Kitty poo poo odors really completed the experience:


And though we both felt like we needed a shower, neither of us thought it was right to fight over the only clean towel:

I was kind of laughing (albeit nervously) through the whole surreal experience. But while searching for clean linens in the closet, we discovered the cleansing power of fire and the ultimate in retarded idiocy:



You can't make this shit up if you wanted to, Wendell!

Um WTF?

Where are U? In a rented condo?

But why are U Here???

:huh wow. That is horrible - did you actually stay there? haha. I would have hit the road and unleashed Panigale hell on their driveway.

I really enjoyed your commentary on Detroit and I think Bama is going to be even better. Don't leave us hanging.

I got shivers looking at these photos. This is straight out of a nightmare...

Sweet mother of ......... What kind of sociopathic pigs would offer you a place in that condition? That, man, is beyond the beyond. Didn't think I'd see a place in America that compares poorly to most places in the backwoods 3rd world....but you just showed it to me. So sorry you and your Dad were greeted with such a pile of !@#$%%^&&*((!, and the "furnace closet cum (pun intended) paint locker"= Insane. As I've been following your RR from day 1 I expect that you rose to the occasion and managed to turn a s__t sandwich into Kobe filet....at least, I hope so. I guess things can only get better from there, or at least I hope that's what happened.

That looks like a house from one of the 47% ! Takers.

Bama B&B? :eek1

A far cry from the crib in MV......

Oh it gets worse. This is part of the problem when you deal with people instead of institutions (like Super 8!). Due to the close proximity, the troubles of someone else's life has an opportunity to contaminate your own.

The original source of the issue was she failed to check Airbnb and was unaware we'd be arriving. She blamed me at first for that (?), but then took responsibility. After committing she'd have the place ready for us, we hit up downtown Mobile! There was a wedding going on, which made me think of the line in No Country for Old Men when Anton Chigurh chokes on some peanuts and says, "you married into this?"

Anyhow, when we got back...well, you saw that part of the story.

My dad was a little more horrified than I was. I honestly thought it was so bad it was funny. Most of the time shit like this happens and you don't laugh at it until years later. I fast forwarded to that point as it was happening. To clarify--we DID sleep there. Just not in those skanky ass beds. I rifled through a closet and found some odd / end sheets and I think a table runner and a couple of musty pillow cases (the pillows she left us had hair all over them). We made it work--no scabie bites, no bedbugs.

The next day (after checking into our bitchin' New Orleans place) the plot takes an unexpected turn. The hostess sent me a text asking how our stay was. When I responded that the bed situation was unacceptable she went ballistic, calling both of us ungrateful, adding that I am a "real jackass," and *oooh* threatened to write a bad review of me (I think I missed the part of how any of this was my fault!). Somehow me expecting to exchange $123 for two clean beds makes yours truly a monster. No wonder her fucking husband left her!

In any case, the more she went on the more I could tell she was having a total meltdown and, being that she resorted to personally attacking me, the more amusing I found it.

Airbnb responded extremely well to the situation, appreciated the photos and is dealing with her and her tantrum. The $$$ is gone forever, but they did throw a $75 credit my way and waived their profit on the transaction, leaving us with a very valuable $18 lesson: stay out of Mobile!

Ahhh, Grasshopper.....you learned a valuable lesson. People that are chemically 'enhanced' always have a boatload of problems that engulf everyone that comes near their sphere! Not only are their problems caused by YOU, their crummy life is entirely due to people like you! Due my career, my search for sleeping quarters is always very, Very narrow.

PS: compared to some of the places I've seen, that place was 'clean'. Remember what I mentioned in a PM.................EVERYTHING is definitions!