Hmmm, I'm not quite sure how this is going to go, my bikes seem to both keep me sane and send my synapses into spasm at the same time. My shrink suggested it might be beneficial to record the journey in some shape or form. I volunteered screaming it into a rubbish bin, but he didn't think that was funny. I told him it wasn't a joke, which only prompted a raised eyebrow and frantic scribbling in that bloody notebook. I swear the slippery bugger is worse than my missus for bringing up past conversations.....but in the end we compromised on doing things his way, so here we go....
As a young teenager in the late 70's - early 80's, I vividly recall peering wide-eyed over the hay bales at the Wanganui and Paritutu street race meetings in New Zealand. The likes of Dave/Neville Hiscock, Bob Toomey, Glen Williams, Stu Avant, Robert Holden, Roger Freeth and co doing battle with the foreign invaders, Gregg Hansford, Jeff Sayle, Robbie Phillis, Craig Trinder etc. Bikes like the incredible Steve Roberts' built aluminium (and later kevlar) monococque special's, RGB500's, RS Honda's, McIntosh Suzuki's were impossibly exotic against the street bikes of the day. To an impressionable lad they were 10ft tall god's astride fantastical machines doing the impossible; the sight, the sound, the smell: a switch was flicked.
NZ's "if you can't buy it, build it" thinking at the time resulted in some truly world class machines:
Fast forward 30 odd years and the last few have been kinda….shit. Too many deaths, dementia and a stroke deconstructing my father memory by memory, 2 x international relocations, a job I hate with a passion etc etc....and sometimes you can't help but think the whole world has gone certifiably insane, completely doolally-in-the-swede. So escaping for an hour or two in the shed is sweet relief: Door closed? Check. Grab a frothy beverage? Check. Stuff an old IOM/GP/WSB DVD/tape in the player? Check. Pretend North Korea has just blown the shit out of the rest of the screwed up world and you are the only survivor? Check.
All of the above is aided by my (now) shed being a converted window-less ex-coolroom, with the insulation doing a great job of blocking out noise/intrusions/reality (not to mention the post-apocalyptic zombies) and giving a blessed bunker-like feel. So my shed is a padded cell I am more than happy to lock myself in.
A little background....
I was a late starter at this club racing malarkey. Living and/or working at remote Australian mine sites for years, battling to lay our financial foundations, the bikes I'd had as a youngster were a 2-stroke smoke clouded memory, a victim of financial necessity. Besides, what use is a GSXR750 on arrow straight unfenced outback highways with the prospect of a high speed interface between man/machine and a 6ft kangaroo and or 1000kg Brahman bull?
But a move to Perth later (late 90's), and the husband of my wife's friend rocks up on an immaculate ZXR750H1....hmmmm. It was like a gentle breath on what you didn't realise was a still smouldering ember. Another friend took my better half for a spin on the back of his Harley (of all things) and her sparkling eyes and the words tumbling over each other afterwards were infectious. Out of the blue, what for so long had seemed out of reach or just plain stupid, seemed.....do-able. So we do, and like a person fumbling in the dark my fingers had found the light switch again.....
A couple of years later and one of my wife's new work mate's (my good lady has a lot to answer for...) is a promising young racer. The call goes out for volunteer track marshall's at Western Australia's only "proper" race circuit, Wanneroo, and we take him up on the offer. You simply cannot get any closer to the action, hands-on in fact (watch those brake rotors!), and that smouldering ember is now well alight: I have got to have a go at this!
So my first track day was on, funnily enough, a Ducati-ish VTR1000F. I knew virtually nothing.....except the fact I absolutely loved it. Again, I have a vivid recollection from that day of Stuart Adams, State Superbike champion, cutting laps on an early R1 and demonstrating lines for us noobies doing an instructional track "walk and talk" around the infield: exhaust crackling on the downshift, peeling into the corner like a WWll Spitfire, revs rising as he tips over onto the smaller diameter edge of the tyre, bike squirming and howling like a live creature as he gets on the gas, a perfect black arc left in his wake as he explodes out of the corner....standing just a handful of metres away it was a uniquely visceral experience. I have wanted very few things in life as badly as I wanted to be that guy.
Long term work commitments with an overseas project were a stick in the spokes but the project does give me the opportunity to fulfil another dream: my first Ducati, an ex-race '94 Strada built to 916SP spec by the Australian Ducati Dealer Team.
Even at nearly 10 years old and completely out-powered by the litre bikes of the early 2000's, the 916 was a pretty cool thing and very different to the GSXR/CBR Kool-aid I'd been drinking prior. Having said that the SP-spec meant it wasn't the stump pulling twin I was half expecting. Quite flat down low and then, like a teenager getting up in the morning, it yawned, blinked at the sunshine of 8000rpm and just bolted! My very first exploratory ride I went from disappointed to grinning in the space of 1000rpm
The term "character" has been beaten to death, but how else do you describe something that is so bi-polar? It's the Sophia Loren of motorcycles: absolutely stunning, but had Sophia been forced into supermarket shopping I have no doubt she would have been a hissing, snarling feral cat, her disdain etched into every movement whilst begrudgingly performing such a menial task. Yet in the right environment she was elegance and class personified. And so it is with the 916, contemptuous of traffic and the environs you find it, but the glimpse of a sinuous curve unfurling ahead and the contempt becomes enthusiasm, the machine you had to coax every step of the way transformed into a partner begging you to lift your game. And like Sophia, who could resist taking one last lingering look over their shoulder when forced to part? Not me.
For those of a certain age (or lack thereof) who may have not experienced the force of nature that was Sophia Loren in her prime:
But under the fluorescent glare of hindsight, as much as I enjoyed the 916, she was the right bike at the wrong time. A P8 what? An ECU, you say? Eproms? Race Tech Gold valves? Suspension set up? Changing belts? Setting valve clearances? I knew none of it, and working FIFO offshore with no internet access (yes, there was such a time) there was little opportunity to learn. But that was the genesis of my "ducati-nkering": starting to fill a few blanks, incrementally sneaking up on a good suspension setup, a Nichols flywheel here, a little bling there.....
Then, like the evil cowardly snake it is, cancer wormed its way into our family back in New Zealand. My company were good enough to allow me to FIFO from there while the war was waged, so the 916 was sold and we temporarily relocated back to NZ.
From some bad comes some good....
The good to come from that bad was the track/racing learning opportunities available. The NZ scene was just so accessible, very grass roots oriented, with several tracks within relatively close proximity, and some highly qualified/experienced people were very generous with their time and knowledge. So a toe dipped in the racing water soon became a full immersion....well, as much as spending half the year working offshore allowed. I'm not sure where else you could stroll up to the multi-time National Championship winning Ohlins technician trackside and be offered not just advice/information but hands-on assistance with bike setup for no cost (Thanks, Dr Bob/Dennis). Yes, there would often be a small detour discussing the apparently long overdue sainthood of Margaret Thatcher, but there's no such thing as a completely free lunch.
No, there was no tractor-beam to the front of the pack, I started waaaay too late for that and despite my best intentions raced far too infrequently. If speed was good looks I was definitely no George Clooney....but I wasn't Danny DeVito either. I was happy enough with that under the circumstances, pretty much just glad to be doing what I'd always dreamed of.
I was also concious that my lovely lady, fearful of the risks I was taking with our future, quietly hated trying to stay busy at home waiting for that phone call. To her credit she never ever stood in my way, trusting me not to do anything too stupid. But realistically, after taking so long to find my way back to bikes, they were too hard won and I liked mine in particular too much to treat them as disposable tools which is pretty much a prerequisite to get amongst the pointy end. So we were actually on the same page: I understood we were only racing for a piece of paper or a plastic trophy and everyone needed to go to work Monday morning.
The highlights were a couple of seasons following the National Championship around the country, racing in a support class, sneaking a few wins and proving to myself I could have qualified for the National Superbike field at each of the tracks. But I'm the first to admit there is a world of difference between qualifying and being competitive, so I'm under no illusions there!
The paddock was like a tribe of petroholic Bedouins loosely caravanning from race track to race track. With plenty of time on track to get my own racing fix it was a real treat to then lean on the pit-wall and enjoy the best bike racing that NZ (with a few star Australian's) had to offer. I still feel quite privileged to have had that insight, seeing the race-craft, the campaigns plotted, the personalities, the heartbreaking tragedy, the breakthrough successes, all set against a backdrop of some of the best scenery in the world.
Something else I discovered along the way? They say you should never meet your heroes but don't believe a word of it.
In the background work was becoming an increasingly toxic place, the multi-day commute coming off nighsthift and red-eye flight's getting to/from the Timor Sea were taking their pound of mental flesh. Track time was my reset button, the thing that forced my brain to wipe the mental slate clean and concentrate on the moment at hand. It's hard to describe....the work crap contaminates your life, and like too much alcohol on a night out you find yourself mentally slumped in the gutter...but a day at the track was the mate who picks you up, dusts you off and puts you under a cold shower. You aren't 100% but at least you can function.
And when you have (far more) talented mates who casually pop this sort of thing how could you not smile?
By 2012, something needed to change. Nothing compares to riding a Superbike in anger but they eat tyres the way a Labrador eats breakfast, and realistically you end up competing against what are genuine World Class racers at the bigger events. Eventually the spanner dropped: as a late starting part-timer that was a gap that was never going to be close to bridged. As much as I was determined to keep improving, and I was, the point of it was to have fun, just do some skids and scrub the mental slate clean. So the idea of an interesting middleweight I could cross enter into other classes, that didn't need an investment in Pirelli shares to gain the bulk buying discount, seemed like a smarter way to go.
I'd been getting some support from a great bike shop who just happened to be Ducati dealers, even though I was racing a Yoshi'd GSXR1000. I'd pop in every now and then to touch base, chat with the parts guy, and put whatever business I could their way. As "luck" would have it they had been trying to sell a stunning 748RS, yes a genuine RS (as competed in WSS) with Marelli dash, front mount ECU, carbon tank, Mg triples/wheels/swingarm, full Ohlins etc etc, on consignment for a loooong time. Every time I saw it I'd get that Lancaster-bombers-swooping-around-in-my-guts/Sophia Loren type feeling...you just don't see bikes like that in isolated NZ. The price reflected this exclusivity...initially...then it started to come down...and down. Gawd, I swear it was taunting me, like Sophia flashing a glimpse of glorious thigh. It would be eligible for BEAR's, Supersport/F2, even Superbike/F1....the racing options would only be limited by my fitness and ability to turn it around between races.
Whether by conscious effort, trial and error, or osmosis from hanging around much smarter people than me, I'd accumulated a lot more "tools" to take it on. But it was still a challenge, the thing still wasn't cheap, and I still knew bugger all about Ducati's.......time to phone a friend.
I didn't really know anybody personally but had an online "mate" who had a huge amount of Ducati experience, building and racing some incredible bikes himself. He was my go-to-guy, and hit me with a much needed bucket of cold water: racing a desmoquattro is very maintenance intensive, an RS is the best-of-the-best but it's also the most-of the-most when it comes to maintenance as the Everest-like cams are absolutely brutal on the valve gear when rev'd as intended, 'cases crack etc etc. And parts? Insert Skippy the bush kangaroo's "tsk-tsk-tsk" and a slow shake of the head here. He didn't say as much, and he would be willing to help out with showing me some basics, but it was pretty plain he thought I was thinking with the little head not the big head. But I took it like a man....and sulked like a two year old.
Until he offered an alternative, and this blog is all about what happens next....
