[RideApart] - The Loneliness Of An Empty Garage.

[Ninjette Newsbot]

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The love affair ended on a swampy summer night last year, as I pushed her home, mile after mile, sweating in the dark.

My 2006*Ducati Sport 1000 was definitely all woman, strong and sexy with a seductive voice and hourglass figure but I knew from the moment I mounted her that she wasn’t the bike for me and, of course, I didn’t listen to that voice inside my head. I thought, maybe this time things would be different. *Maybe this would be the bike for me.

But I tried and I tried to keep the relationship going, through thick and thin, I thought, but when those clamps busted off the fuel pump around 2 AM and she coasted to a halt, I knew that it was over. More money, I thought, more hassle hauling it to the dealership 50 miles away, more smartasses telling me “Hey, you knew they were high maintenance.” *

“Bike troubles?” at least three cops asked me on that death march home.

I had troubles even before I owned the Ducati with a*rusty, grime-choked 1971 Honda CB750 that was never able to give me more than a few miles. They were good miles, though, looking back on it. The Honda was a comfortable cruiser for a guy who wasn’t yet 30, but very-much settled into middle aged, mentally. *But I always knew I wanted something more, something exotic.*

I searched the web looking for that right bike and lo, that first ad for the Ducati Sport Classics was like hitting puberty all over again, a tingling of all my senses and, of course, my senses ran past my brain and right to the bank. I dropped a $5,000 deposit without ever riding a sportbike, let alone this kind of café racer torture rack and I sold the Honda to a Japanese bike collector.

I fooled myself for years, through white-knuckled wobbles and minor embarrassments at red lights, a collection of little, torquey moments that made me feel inadequate. She turned heads and got compliments everywhere and somehow that made it worse. When things got bad my*thoughts drifted to my old Honda. *Did I miss her?

My dealer, when I called about the pump just repeated his same mantra of “bring it in” and ironically, I wound up fixing it myself, draining and removing the tank and replacing some clamps for about $10 thanks to a great YouTube video I found. It was my proudest moment in motorcycle maintenance, I was satisfied, I was proud of myself, I did it, I thought, I fixed it.

I then promptly put her up for sale*on eBay.

I sold the bike in September to a guy who’d been seduced like me and wanted something exotic to compliment his Triumph Bonneville. I planned to put a deposit on a new Honda CB1100, upright and relaxed like my old brown bomber, a motorcycle that could take me away for days on end without a chiropractor. *Maybe I’d call her Marge instead of Sophia Loren. *Something less exotic.

Best intentions, though. Now I own nothing and the last time I rode a motorcycle, I crashed my son’s Honda CRF 50 and gouged a hole in my shin trying to avoid hitting my dog. *I don’t even know what I did with the money. Christmas presents maybe, paying off the credit card I used to buy my Termignoni slip-ons?

Now I have an empty garage and I’m that much closer to 40. A few weeks ago, I was getting pizza with my family and heard that*unmistakable sound, like a World War I fighter plane rumbling down the runway.

Then I saw her, black like mine, tearing off from a stop sign. *

“God damn,” I said out loud, still struck by her rare beauty.*

Then I turned my head away. *”Not this time”, I thought, “not this time…”

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