Intro. Enthusiasm. Geekdom and Obsession…

I am a motorcycle enthusiast. Maybe even a motorcycle geek, but most certainly motorcycle crazy! I own seven bikes currently and have owned over twenty bikes total in my life, not counting mini bikes and dirt bikes.  I don’t expect everyone to understand. I don’t even expect other motorcyclists to understand. Maybe it’s a disease, but it’s better than putting the money up my nose! So, now that the admittance to my geekdom is out of the way it’s time to turn to my obsession. My obsession is the type of bike I first was ever on, British bikes. With the help of a few other fellas several years ago, I started a little club called The Brit Iron Rebels (www.britiironrebels.com). We have over 300 members in 12 countries and we continue to grow. But, I shall return to that story later…

Fetish…

Brit bikes are my obsession and forever shall be, but Italian bikes are my… well, my fetish. Namely, Ducati. (Ok, so a well preserved Vincent Black Shadow might well play into my motorcycle fetishism as well, but that’s another story.) To me, a Ducati is  a bike still built with… well, love. When I ride one, I feel like I’m cheating on my Brit bikes with an italian supermodel! When I return to my garage after riding my Ducati Multistrada, I almost feel like my Brit bikes are sneering at me as if to say, “Where the hell have you been?”

It’s no wonder that I managed after several years to forge a relationship with Ducati itself. Most of the people at Ducati are mostly riders themselves and seriously do take interest in their motorcycle obsessed fans. (Dare I ever tell any of them that it’s a fetish that we are dealing with here, not just obsession. Shush!) So, when I threw a simple “Hey, Ducati, I’d like to try out one a ‘dem Diavels fer the summer?” I was astounded that Ducati actually considered it! Well, here it is, tour time and I am traveling with a brand new, Ducati Diavel Chromo in my trailer waiting form me and the open road everyday. Yep, that’s right, Jason from Ducati North America has ensured that I gottsa an “Italian Devil” on my back all summer and I’m happy about it!

What is a Diavel?  Basically it’s a 465 pound “power cruiser” that’ll whoop many sport bike’s butts in a dead drag, carve canyons better than most sport tourers, make a V-Rod look like a V-Dog (Yeah, sorry, even with your Porsche designed motor.) and defeat the Yamaha V-Max at it’s own game. In short, it’s game changer and I get to ride one for the next three months! So, here it it is friends. My adventures, reports, loves, likes and complaints as I travel the Poison tour road cheating on my Brit bikes with my Italian girlfriend. Shush….

This is the bike on day one.