....And we're off!

Welcome to the bolg! As it says in the title, this will be a place for me to put down all of my stories and general gum-flapping that has anything and everything to do with Ducati and/or bikes in general… because let’s be honest, motorbikes are the coolest things on the planet!

A bit about me and the Bolg:

As a kid, my Dad and Uncle were border-line obsessed with classic British and European bikes. I basically grew up surrounded by piles of “Classic Bike” and “MotorCycle” magazines and used to flip through them constantly. My Dad and Uncle were mainly big on classic Brit bikes and between the two of them, they had a few BSA’s and Ariel’s but also an old Jawa from Czech. They definitely imparted the “Cool” factor of Euro bikes onto to me at a very young age.

But it wasn’t until my Dad had bought a Tamiya model kit of Mike Hailwood’s Ducati 900 that I fell head over heels for Ducati! I thought it was the hottest thing I’d ever seen! Even at the tender age of 7 or whatever I was at the time, I could tell that there was something special about these bikes. And even though my Dad and Uncle were Brit bike aficionados, they still held “Duke’s” in high esteem. They’d always talk about Ducati as though they were some sort of mythical beast that was seldom seen in real life… but if you did…oh boy! That was a special moment indeed!

Now, I have just returned to Canada after spending the last three years in Italy, so a lot of my stories over the next little while will be from that period. And of course this only added fuel to the fire that is my Ducati desire (yeah… I just wrote that…terrible I know.) But you can expect stories involving other bikes of all makes and models from my time in south Asia as well, as it is a very bike-centric area. Some stories might just be little anecdotes of a paragraph or two…or maybe just quick blurbs about something crazy I saw that day, while others might be 14 pages long! And of course…I’ll be including as many pictures as I can ; )

But to give you an idea of what’s on the immediate horizon, here is what I’m working on posting up in the next few months or so: 2010 Multistrada 1200 road trip 01 - Rome to Matera, 2010 Multistrada 1200 road trip 02 – Northern Italy and Switzerland, Some insights into Motorcycling in Italy and a few posts about some of the better routes I’ve taken the Duke on around Rome and elsewhere in Italy. Also on the schedule (although it might be a while as it is currently well below zero outside!) is a chronicling of my 748 rebuild and a restoration of my Dad’s old Beezer (That’s slang for BSA for the uninitiated out there).

So, stay tuned and I hope you enjoy the read!

Ride Safe!

J