[twistingasphalt.com] - A Gear Up

[Ninjette Newsbot]

The exhaust is bellowing with deathly, evil notes of noise – big throaty gasps that come and go with increasing frequency - as the engine continues to blast away. The nearby canyon walls letting each breath live just a tad past their prime on exit, as the sounds echoes from one cliff face to the next.

The power plant turns over again, and again, and again as the throttle continues to evade logic by simply pushing on — Harder and faster then each previous bend in the road. Continually building the momentum and moving it forward. With a hurried, frenzied sense of pace. Each series of newfound revolutions foreshadowing the next pulsating sense of purpose that’s come to life beneath me.

It’s a feeling of excess that while unexpected for today seems utterly, and perhaps surprisingly, ‘comfortable’. As if it’s always been here, always been along for the ride. Then the corner comes to its natural conclusion. Dying out before altering its path completely. The change of plans evoking a series of actions and then reaction that all ultimately plant the 999 squarely on a path of conquest. Knocking off sections of road one by one as it tally’s the score.

It’s an inspiring sensation — The kind that rekindles the mean of the word ‘passion’ with each crack of the throttle. Each brash graze of concrete. Each new moment bringing the sport of sportbike riding back in vogue once again. Ultimately reminding me why I got hooked on this kick in the first place.

It’s an attraction that starts innocently enough, brimming to surface somewhere down low, before it ascends through the crankcase, climbs into and then out of the chassis, before finally working its way into the rider. A rustling, wicked, throbbing sense of promise. As if today, of all days, you simply cannot do any wrong.

And so goes the life of riding the 999 once again.

In all honestly it feels like it’s been quite awhile since I last slide my leg over the 9 – and perhaps it has been or perhaps it hasn’t - my sense of time and space right now is frankly a jumbled mess. Days and weeks don’t seem to hold much meaning at the moment because it’s one big continual blur. The framework for life has dissolved in to a never-ending to-do list that only seems to get added to, not reduced.

So today after deciding that I had to snag a few hours of daylight for myself, I entered the garage and looked at both the 1098S and the old man’s 999 – each proud, strong, deviant motorcycles in their own right – yet I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t resist the temptation to climb aboard the 999 and take it out.

Having been off the bikes for awhile, my initial rational was that taking the 9 out was a safer choice – still plenty fast for the day, but less extreme, less powerful, even less dangerous. Of course all sportbikes are dangerous, so this wasn’t exactly a lucid line of reasoning. It was a reactionary line of reasoning – because I was searching for a rational motive to explain an illogical decision.

Grabbing the keys, it occurred to me that whenever I’m in doubt and both bikes happen to be at my disposal, for some reason I always seem to be drawn to the ‘9’. Logic would seem to suggest there’s something wrong with this sort of choice – the 1098 is a substantially better motorcycle. It’s lighter, it’s faster, it’s more powerful, it stops better. It does everything the 9 does in spades. Yet since when has riding been exclusively about pure logic?

Several miles down the road, when the asphalt transformed from a docile conduit for mainstream transportation into a curvy avenue for the adventuresome, I was rewarded for the choice. It took just two mild corners into the ‘real’ part of the ride to intrinsically understand that this was going to be a great day. The weather was perfect, the asphalt was good, and perhaps most importantly, the bike was effortlessly moving. Making a complex world seem simple and easy again.

It’s a sensation that quite frankly has eluded me for what feels like eons. That sense of omnipresent individual control – when you’re so locked into the ride that the bike no longer acts as if it were merely a mechanical object but rather behaves as if it were an extension of your own body and soul. So what then is it about this particular bike that somehow always seems to get me going? And why do I so strongly gravitate towards it?

I suppose there are dozens of real quantifiable reasons; My first trip to the Ducati factory coincided closely with the release of the 999 and 749, I came of age as a rider on this bike, I’ve always appreciated it’s sense of style and grace. Certainly I owe much of my sense of sportiness to this bike. Yet ultimately the deeper I looked in that dark place that sits somewhere between our hopes and dreams, near the pit of our existence and just beyond our ego, there was only one reason that really mattered – I know that this bike will always protect me. It never does anything wrong, it never upsets me or worries me, it never acts out, it never asks for to much or puts me in harms way. It just lets me ride it. Any way I want…. Which ultimately begs the question; can a motorcycle be your Guardian Angel?



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