Sliders.

                Among the things I have bought for my bike I would say that the SpeedyMoto under body frame sliders are the most important because they help to keep my frame and engine intact in case of a crash. The way that the frame sliders work is that they attach to the frame of the bike and stay right against the fairings so the incase of a crash the impact will be delivered evenly to the plastic instead of the frame because the sliders hold the plastics taught. Normally the fairings would just break instantly in a crash but with the sliders holding them in place it allows them to take the majority of the impact. The instillation of these frame sliders was fairly simple but did require some creative thinking. To start off I had to remove the left and right fairings. After they were off I had to remove the rod the holds the engine to the frame. To do so I had to hold the one end in place with a socket wrench and turn the other side with the same size socket wrench. Well, turns out I had two socket wrenches but only one of the correct size, so I looked around the garage for a few minutes, found a drill bit that look like it would fit into the one end of the rod and locked it in place with a pair of pliers. This worked perfectly and after a minute of spinning I had the nut off the right side of the rod. Next I had to take the rod out of the frame and it got about three fourths of the way there before it was abruptly stopped. After assessing the situation I realized that with the rod out of the right side of the frame the weight shifted and made it so the holes on the left side no longer lined up. Thinking about a solution to this problem for a few minutes, I pulled the car jack out of the trunk or my car, got my dad to help me balance the bike and lifted the bike a few millimeters to free the rod. Then we quickly put in the new rod while the bike was still on the jack and then lowered the bike back to the ground. With the new rod in the frame and engine I attached the rubber sliders the each end of the rod and secured them into place. With the sliders now in place the next thing to do was to put the fairing back on. Everything went back together perfectly and the new frame sliders were hardly noticeable. After this little project I had spent $130 and an hour of my free time but my bike is now much more secure on the streets since the frame and engine are now protected. 

Fairings.

New Rod, left side.

New rod, right side.

With slider, right side.

With slider, left side. 

Dainese Jacket

                After I bought my 848 I realized that I also have to buy some riding gear to go with my bike. With my previous bikes I didn’t see s necessity in a leather jacket, boots or gloves. Now that I have such a powerful bike with 130hp attached to my right wrist I felt the need to start gearing up for my own good. The biggest worry I had was my torso, so I decided to invest in a leather jacket first. Luckily, one of my dad’s friends let me borrow his old leather jacket to use until I bought one. Picking out a leather jacket was a lot more work than I expected because there are so many different brands and types. First I had to pick which brand I wanted to buy from. There are many different brands but the two that seemed ideal to me were Alpinestars and Dainese. After reading many reviews about each brand I decided to go with Dainese. Now I had to pick the type of jacket I wanted, there are touring jackets, summer jackets, rain jackets, racing jackets, multipurpose jackets and textile jackets. After a good bit of research, I decided that I wanted a racing leather jacket because they offered the most protection and look the best style wise to me. Now there were even more subdivisions, there were racing jackets with titanium inserts, some with carbon inserts, some fully perforated, some partly perforated, some non-perforated, some with aerodynamic speed humps and the list literally goes on and on depending on how much money you have. I decided for me I wanted a racing jacket with composite protectors at the elbows, titanium inserts at the shoulders and a slot for a back protector.   The jacket from Dainese that had all of the features and was appealing to me just so happened to be called the “Racing” jacket, who would’ve guessed that? After buying the leather jacket, I was $600 poorer. Once I got the jacket in the mail I immediately took it out of the box and tried it on, fit like a glove. The leather was so smooth and flexible, the composite elbow protectors were confidently sturdy and comfortable and the titanium inserts on the shoulders were top notch and added to the appeal of the jacket. The inside of the jacket had a very nice sanitary liner that is designed to keep cool air in when it’s hot and warm air in when it’s cold. The jacket itself was a deep black with red accents across the arms and read Dainese across the front in white, making it very appealing to me. A nice feature of the jacket is that it has a zipper the goes the circumference of the waist that allows you to attach a pair of Dainese leather pants to the jacket, making it a two piece leather racing suit. Everything on the jacket from the stitching to the coloring to the tags was top notch and worth every penny I paid for it.  

Tragedy & Triumph

Well, after riding 86 miles around the Loudon track without any faults it seemed the worst has happened. While tightening one of the straps around the fork on my bike in the trailer, the strap on the opposite side gave way and the bike fell over in a blaze of glory. Not knowing what to do, I called my dad over and we lifted the bike back up to her rightful position. All seemed well surprisingly but alas the front nose fairing and bracket had been cracked on the left side of the bike along with the lever. What a travesty I thought, how could this happen to my bike, my prized possession?

                After getting home I immediately went to my dealer to assess the damage of the bike and what it would take to fix it. Careful inspection proved that I would need to order a new nose fairing, a new under fairing bracket, and a new set of levers. I would have just bought one replacement lever from Ducati but I figured why not splurge and get some nice sporty levers while I’m at it. All in all, it came down to about $900 dollars for everything including shipping and handling, which wasn’t that bad in actuality. A few days go by and my parts arrive at Koup’s, so I go and pick them up and bring everything home. Realizing that fixing all of this was not going to be a walk in the park, I waited till I had a full day to dedicate to this task so I don’t have to split it up and risk losing things in the process.

                Finally, the day comes to undergo the process of restoring my bikes previous beauty. Its easy going at first, all there is to do is pull off the left and right side fairing to access the front fairing. Next it’s off with the mirrors and now things start to get a little harder. The nose fairing had quite a few hidden bolts and screws that gave me a little bit of trouble but after a little bit of searching I managed to muscle off the nose fairing to reveal the under fairing bracket. The under fairing bracket was a mess to take off because everything is so well designed on this bike that everything seems to be hidden or out of reach. A nice surprise was that all the bolts on the under fairing bracket seemed to have lock-tight on them which made it that much more difficult to remove them. Also to my surprise I had to unplug all of the wiring and remove the dashboard to be able to take the under fairing bracket off. After taking everything off, putting everything back one was ten times easier because I already knew where everything was supposed to go. Once everything was back together and as it should be, a feeling of triumph came over me. My bike was restored to its original beauty and my back account was $900 poorer. 

                                                                                   

Loudon..again.

            Taking my motorcycle up to Loudon for a track day was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. It was amazing being able to open up the throttle on my bike and to use the bike the way it was intended to be. The day started off with signing in at the racing pit and getting all the stickers you need such as your number and class. After all that you have to tape up all the mirrors, turn signals and brake lights on the bike so they don’t shatter in case you crash. After that we took the bike over to tech to have everything on the bike checked out and got the ok to use it on the track. From tech I went to a conference room to be briefed on all the procedures on the track such as what different flags mean, passing rules and how to enter and exit the track. Next we were off to gear up and get ready for our first session on the track.

            The initial feeling of getting ready to enter the track was just pure adrenaline and once I got out there onto the track, the feeling got even better. For the first session it was like a game of follow the leader so everyone could get a feel for the track and get used to it. During the second session while going around an uphill left turn, I scraped my toe slider against the pavement and the first thing that went through my mind was “Oh shit, I’m dead”, but I pulled up real quick and kept on going. The next time I got to that turn I felt my toe slider scrape against the pavement again but this time I leaned into the turn even more, making it scrape harder and thought to myself this time, “Oh shit, this is awesome”. Throughout each session I would lean a little farther into the turns and go a little faster each time around the track. The leader of our session, David Sadowski Jr., was a professional AMA racer and every time I would catch up to him on the track he would look back at me, turn back around and just speed off like it was nothing. Through all the session on the track I got in 86 miles on the track that day and loved every mile of it.

            In between track session our group would have a twenty minute class that would talk about the basics of racing. The first class was about finding the “line” on the track which is the most effective path on the track that will give you the fastest time. The second class was about  how to pass people on the track whether it be on the inside or outside. The next class was about clutch less shifting and how to blip the throttle. Blipping the throttle is increasing the rpm’s right before downshifting to better match the speed of the engine and the crank. The last class was about body position and how to use your body weight to further lean the bike in turns.

    All in all this was an amazing experience that I will never forget. This will definitely not be my last day at the track and maybe, just maybe in a few years you’ll see me on TV racing at the Isle of Man TT. 

        

To And From Loudon

            Part of the deal of buying my 2010 Ducati 848 was that I got a free track day at one of many sponsored tracks around the country with World Champion Doug Polen. One of these tracks was nearby in New Jersey, 1.5 to 2 hours. Now, logically speaking that would be the obvious choice to go to that track since its so close but of course you can’t always decide things on logic. Point being, I chose to go to the track in Loudon, Hew Hampshire which is about 550 miles or about 8.5 to 9 hours away. So, let’s go in depth as to why I would pick to go nine hours away instead or two.

            Now, my dad and I we’re not just driving around 20 hours up and back with little detours hear and there to simply have one day at a track with my bike. First off, my Uncle lives in Providence, Rhode Island and is quite the motorcycle enthusiast. My dad and I met up with my Uncle at his house, took a two hour break, got some food and brought him with us up to Loudon to watch me track the bike and be a part of the whole experience. All of us spent the night at a Red Roof Hotel three miles from the track to rest up before the big day. Six am rolls around pretty fast and we’re all up getting ready to leave for the track. Once we got to the track there we’re Ducati’s everywhere, no longer did I stand out as the young man with the Ducati, I was just another guy with another Ducati. Now I could take some time to describe the experience of tracking my bike but I will save that for another post as to not take away from the subject of this post.

            After the track day was all done, around five O’clock, all three of us packed up the bike got in the car and drove down to Boston to visit my cousin Pam to go out to eat. Driving through Boston we realized that there were not many restaurants with big enough parking lots to pull in the trailer that the bike was in. After searching for a nice parking lot we decided to go to the Marriot Hotel to eat because there was a plus size parking lot there. The restaurant there was very nice, however we may have been underdressed, and the food was on par for being in a hotel. The waiter, if I reall correctly is Carl, seemed to be quite the stern waiter but was pleasantly surprised to find that he was actually comical and caught the duck to order from the pond behind the hotel(inside joke). Dinner comes and goes and we drive Pam back to her apartment in Boston and we continue our drive back to Sharon, Massachusetts where my Uncle’s girlfriend lives to spend the night.

            The road to her house in Sharon was not the easiest since we unknowingly took the back road to her house which goes through an unpaved dirt/gravel road that one would think Thor himself struck holes in the road with his mighty hammer because it was horrific. It took close to 30 min to travel six tenths of a mile to reach her house. We spent the night there and left around eleven am the next morning. After arriving back at my Uncle’s house around noon or so we left again to visit the college Johnson & Wales because I plan on attending this college in a year or two. During the tour of the campus that my Uncle’s friend gave us I learned that there is no real campus for the college because all the buildings are built to blend in to the city, but there is a big enough courtyard at the main office to play Frisbee. Later that night we went out to eat at a very nice restaurant where we all had a different cut of aged beef that was superb. After dinner we went to my Uncle’s house and slept. The next morning we woke up at seven am and were on the road home by eight am. 

            So you see, this was not just a trip to track my bike, it was an adventure that was packed of events. It would be impractical to describe everything that happened and most probably wouldn’t care to hear about it so this is my summary that gives just enough detail to explain why we chose to drive twenty hours all together to track my bike rather than four hours all together. 

The Beginning

It all started about two years ago when I began saving up my money to buy a Yamaha R1. I originally wanted to buy the R1 because it was the best of the best out of all the Japanese inline 4s. This all changed though when I went to Koup’s Cycle Shop to get my 93 Suzuki Gsx1100G serviced.

I walked into the shop and there it was sitting in the middle of the showroom. I had never seen a Ducati before but when I first saw the Ducati 848 in the showroom I just knew that I had to have it. The 848’s design was like nothing I had ever seen before, the lines of the bike were subtle yet very aggressive, the tail was bowed out instead or a short stub, the one sided swingarm showed the design of the rims, the vivid red made everything on the bike pop and flow together, and lastly the headlights of the 848 gave it such character that you could feel the presence of the bike. From that moment on I started saving every nickel and penny I had to buy that bike. After about a year and six months of hard work I had finally saved up enough money to walk in that door again and claim that bike as mine.

Now some people might say that spending that much money on a motorcycle at a young age is ridiculous, saying that there are some many better ways to make use of the money, but I would argue that it’s a marvelous decision on my part for many reasons. One reason is that saving up for this bike has taught me a lot about money management. Once I started saving up for the bike I started to see what stuff I was buying was necessary and what stuff was not needed, giving me a new respect for the money I worked for. Another reason is that buying this bike is a test of responsibility. Now that I have spent so much of my money on the machine, it’s up to me to keep it clean and not abuse it on the streets.  The last reason, maybe the most important reason, is that it’s my money that I worked for and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about how I spend it.

So far this has just been an intro with some back ground information to get people up to speed because I bought the bike about 5 months ago now. Throughout my blogging on here I will discuss my impression on the 2010 Ducati 848 that I have, the things that I have added on to my bike, that gear I have bought to protect myself on the bike, and other things as they come along in relation to my bike. I will also be posting pictures of my bike to show before and after pics of the things I have upgraded and if I can get my hands on a helmet camera I will be showing a video of my upcoming trackday in Loudon, NH.

That’s it for this week, stay tuned!