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

Yeah... On occasion. Planning on riding to Alberta in June. Possibly passing through.

Miguel

When you get your bike back lets set up a breakfast ride. I'm in San Francisco off of Monterey Ave.

Miguel

What? They have a 100hp limit in Europe? I thought that was a myth! I mean I thought they tried that here and in Europe and failed. Sometime in the early 90s.

True. 100hp limit non existent now.

It still exists in France (106hp) but hopefully this limit will be removed one day thanks to European Union single standards.

Cafe - be sure to look me up if/when you ride through Alberta. I am in Calgary and would e happy show you (or any of you other FFs!) around.

Cheers, David aka Desmodab

You need one of the Panigale 799s LINK

Classic.

As for the HP limit--it's only in France. 100hp w/ a 6% degree of error. The event organizers of the rally dyno your bike to make sure, too.

Just finished your RR and loved it. I read a little everyday to savor it. Your writing, pics and and thinking man's adventure has been truly inspiring. Please let me know how to get a signed copy of your book. If you're ever near Sebastian Florida your welcome to a spare room in my little piece of paradise. I'm living my dream now riding daily and spending time w my woman and 2 sons

Brief summary on what led up to this last chapter.

This ride report began with an idea, an idea relating to the world not working the way it’s supposed to. Through a series of events it became clear that hard work, dedication, logical planning and sacrifice don’t always deliver expected results. And even when everything ‘works out’, happiness is anything but guaranteed. That’s where I was a year ago. My response: Hit the reset button. Submit to desire. Live and be exposed. Plan nothing. Experience. Discover. Ignore habit. Indulge compulsions. Do things that excite. Play.

It’s easier said than done. The collective body of thought that forms the basis for the decisions that led us to a point in our lives we want to escape is, ironically, the same collective body of thought (the only body of thought?) that we are forced to rely on to plan our escape. We’re our own biggest problem! How are we supposed to escape when the only tool we have to escape is the tool that built the prison we’re in? If the only thing we know is how to build walls, then how can building walls lead to anything but a harder prison to escape? (Anyone who’s ever had a kid to save a marriage or taken MORE responsibilities on to help increase their satisfaction with their job knows what I’m talking about.) The neural networks that make us who we are the neural networks that hold us captive to who we are.
But there is an solution, albeit a little berserker.

There’s an intrusive and ever-present class of ideas, a category of thought distinct from all of the other concepts firing away in our heads and it’s there nearly all the time. These are the types of thoughts that are innocent (but malicious), impractical, impulsive; the type of thoughts that get us into a lot of trouble if we act on them. These are the whims we often acted on when we were children, which led to the sinister satisfaction that can only come from activities involving breaking windows, peeing on school bathroom floors, shooting strangers floating on inner tubes with pellet guns, throwing rocks at moving trains, etc. Years later, when reminiscing about frogs in the neighbors car or the expression of the old man next door upon seeing his lawnmower on fire, our response is often to grin mischievously while lowering our head in a bit of shame. We learn quickly not to act like this through punishment or injury, but getting away with it leads to good-conscienced-perniciousness. I’m not exactly sure why curiosity taken to the limits of insubordination is so entertaining, but it is. Perhaps it’s control over the world, despite consequences. Perhaps it’s the inevitable result of living in a world with so many rules and so much order that the need to express yourself in a manner that’s uniquely one’s own is damned to be rebellious. For whatever reason, singing in the choir at church just doesn’t satisfy the same way as scribbling, “Spoiler Alert: He Dies At the End” on the title page of a hotel bible.

Fast forward a couple decades from the days of swapping everyone’s doormats in the neighborhood and I realized that it was the brutish, damn-the-consequences voice in my head that I was listening to. And instead of ending up in the principals office I ended up on a Panigale in the middle of nowhere, on an open-ended, unplanned adventure, experimenting, taking risks and taking pictures, doing what scared me (which included writing publicly). I wasn’t sure what would happen, but I knew that I was unhappy because of me. I was in a place in my life because of my decisions. My trip was my method of discovering everything I’d been wrong about, (including ideas about myself and others). It also lead to discovering all kinds of things I never knew existed, never would have discovered otherwise. And just when I thought the journey and all of the rewards of revelation were over, Ducati called.

A few weeks after Tim Collins (North American PR Manager for Ducati) and I spoke, I was standing in the paddock at the Circuit of the Americas, surrounded by a fleet of 1199 Rs talking to Claudio Domenicali, Ben Spies and Nicky Hayden. I met some coolest moto-journalists in the business and spent an hour wringing out an 1199 R (which is happy to kill you if you have the slightest doubt about your abilities). A year ago if someone told me, “ok, somehow, someway you need to get yourself into Ducati’s International Press Launch for the Panigale R,” my only solution would be to break in or steal someone’s identity. I could never have thought, “feed your desire, Dennis, and you’ll get there.” But that’s exactly what I did and that’s exactly what happened. Instead of spending another year doing what I was supposed to be doing (organizing my future), I gave into my passion (unknowingly aligning myself with the same philosophical ideals that drive Ducati) and all kinds of amazing shit happened.

With that said, here’s my CotA experience, compliments of Ducati:

Rolled out the door at some ungodly hour, with track gear taking up more space than I needed during my trip around the country on the bike!


An 1199 feels extremely roomy compared to this:


Touchdown. Dry desert air:


Exiting the plane would be the last normal thing that happened to me the entire event. Once I exited the secure area of the terminal I was greeted by Tim Collins, Ducati’s PR Manager for North America, and, err, a film crew. I’d been asked a few days before if it was cool if they shot some footage, but I didn’t quite know what to expect. I received a first-hand look into what goes into all those cool videos we see on youtube….I’ll comment more on the details once the clip is released, but the film dudes Ducati hired (‘sup Gabe, Matt and Ryan!) were top notch.

Here’s their first film of the event:
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Setting up for my getaway scene in the Audi, while trying to avoid security:

The first five paragraphs sound a lot like a Foreword to me.

Cheers,

Mike

I have to comment on 'taking more responsibility(s)....trying to make someone else happy.' Luckily, I was bright enough to NOT throw a kid in the mix, but after 2+ decades of working my arse off, building two houses, barn, fencing, etc., in an attempt to make someone else happy (I won't bring up my career), I retired early, turning down a promotion, and walked into 'The Promised Land'! I had made it! I was living the 'dream'....for about 12 months. I was informed that I was ..... I won't get into that, but the divorce was a SHOCK! (BIG understatement!!)

It took me awhile to heal up and then try and figure out 'what the hell happened?' Dennis hit upon a key point: why do some of us continually suppress our inner desires in an attempt to make others happy? I finally hit upon my issues ( back to my up bringing) and it came as a big surprise.

Many CONGRATS to Dennis! For following an uncharted path!

I can't believe it's still going... YES!!!! It's like when you go see one of your favorite bands live, and they do an encore...
and then they do a second encore!!!

MORE! MORE! MORE! MORE!

Very happy it all turned out so well for you!

We cruised to the circuit a day before the press launch so I could meet with a few of the guys. We rolled into an empty parking lot, save for one security guard.



You know that feeling when you were a kid when your parents took you to a burned down building in the middle of nowhere--wait, scratch that--I mean to Disneyland? Well that&#8217;s what the Circuit of the Americas was like. Except that there were no crowds and you got to jump off the boats in the Pirates of the Caribbean to wander around. Dream-like? Definitely. We parked, wandered over to the pits, opened a door and:



Now I'm not a very star-struck person. Mostly because I never recognize anyone. But I recognized that guy above because, in addition to being a MotoGP pilot and the 2009 WSBK Champion, he pioneered the Ben Spies method that completely changed my riding style:

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Oh yeah--this guy was there, too.



Tim did the introductions and there I was, talking to Ben Spies and Nicky Hayden about my trip and what they thought of the 1199 R. Who'd have thunk that day I roared out of LA that I'd end up here?

And after everyone went back to business another cool cat, Stefano Sbettega, marketing and communications director, introduced me to none other than Claudio Domenicali, the very intense man behind Ducati Corse and the man behind the Panigale. A friend of his had forwarded a link to this report, a call was made and there I was. It was a little like meeting Dr. Frankenstein (or if I continue with the Disney analogy, Disney). Without him, our beloved heroine of this story would not exist. Did I mention he was intense? When the engineers at other motorcycle companies have nightmares it's because of him.



Oh yes. He can f'in ride, too! How bad ass is that?

Totally badass. Awesome post.

Re: Having kids to save a marriage. It doesn't work. After a lifetime of serial relationships -- all of which having issues -- I finally got to analyzing the business. I poured through the stats and distilled my entire relationship history into something I could understand. And there it was .... that single, undeniable commonality that featured in all my relationships. Fix that and I'd be gold.

It was me.

In my case, figuring out that it was me enabled me to go back to my family. As with you, I've never been happier. Instead of thinking the grass is greener on the other side, I tend my own lawn.

So you've become a keychain hoarder that only consumes pretzels and ice cream. Nice.

And rings the living shit out of the best motos on the planet. Don't forget that part.

Sea Horse. I saw that right away. Maybe Spies should hire me as his track adviser?

You are surprised?
A genuine person, like yourself, is easily detected.
In short, good things happen to good people.