Started in December of 2006 we are a motorcycle club recognized by Ducati North America as an official Ducati Club, but are not limited to Ducati ownership.
Here you can share your ride stories, tech info, racing news and general information 2 wheel related or not.
This page will focus on member introduction. Every 2 weeks I will ask a new member to give a quick intro and some pics.
PhilB
=====
I did not get into bikes while I was young; I was really much more of a car nut growing up. My family always drove Alfa Romeos; I learned to drive in one. My first couple cars were Hondas, then an Opel briefly, but I bought my own first Alfa in 1983, and haven't owned another brand of car since. I don't always have a car, but when I do I still always get an Alfa.
I didn't get into motorcycles (and had never been on one) until I was 24. This was in 1987, in Santa Barbara, CA. I had a good friend at the time who was into scooters bigtime. After college, he opened a shop for Vespas and Lambrettas. Then a neighbor, who had also recently graduated and was moving, had this motorcycle (a 1976 Honda CB360T) he had bought at a garage sale. It didn't run, he didn't know why, he didn't want to haul it along with him. The day before his move, he came over and said he'd take $25 for it, with helmet. I said OK to that. It mainly needed a battery and some cleaning. I hit the junkyard for a few small bits and got it running decently for about another $100.I then sold it to a student who needed cheap transpo for $600. I decided this biking thing might be pretty cool after all. My friend had an extra Vespa (Rallye 180), so I started riding that around a bit, and enjoyed that.
Then one day a couple of young German fellows rolled into the shop on a couple of 1960 Heinkel scooters. Those are very rare in the U.S. (they imported about 300 of them total), but still fairly common in Germany. A couple weeks later, they rode back on in, and with a few quick lessons and tips, I bought it and they left. I rode that scooter daily for the next 5 years, and occasionally since (I still have it), and have added about 60K miles to it during my ownership so far.
While I was riding the Heinkel around, I had also started as a side business claiming abandoned bikes, getting them titled and running, and selling them to students, so I'd had some experience with mostly 350-450cc '70's vintage UJMs. My only big bike experience had been a few rides on a co-worker's Yamaha 600 Radian, and some time with a friend's Norton 750 Commando.
I *really* liked the Norton, so I was thinking I wanted basically the same idea in a modern bike. I could tell I liked the sound and torque curve of a twin better than a four, but also knew I wanted the responsiveness of a sportbike. Then I saw an article in Cycle World about the new Ducati Monster. It had been a show bike, but got a good response, so they were going to make 5000 of them, for one year only, and see if people would buy them. It was *exactly* what I had been looking for -- a 2-cyl sportbike with no fairing. So I looked up the closest Ducati dealer in the Yellow Pages, and wound up handing him $10K, without having ridden it (or even seen one in person). They weren't going to arrive for a few months yet, and I hoped to heck I was going to like it when it got here. It seems to have worked out OK, though. :) 159,000 miles so far, in just over 15 years of nearly troublefree ownership.
I've since ridden, and owned as second bikes, a number of others, but have never come across anything that fits me better or works better for my usage patterns than that old Monster, so I'm planning to ride it basically forever.
Total Members: 705
