The Ducks of Autumn

The Ducks of autumn

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

IF MY TYPING SEEMS A LITTLE SHAKY this morning, it’s because I was up late last night writing out invitations for the monthly meeting of the Slimy Cruds Motorcycle Gang, of which I am a member.

The Slimy Cruds are essentially a loosely confederated group of fortysomething hardcore lifelong sportbike-oriented motorcyclists whose motto is “Ride Hard, Ride Short.” The club has no formal rules, but hews to an unwritten-indeed, un-spoken until this moment-code of honor that might be stated thusly: A Crud never turns down a beer unless he already has one in each hand, or is busy lighting a cigarette recently bummed off another member.

High on the moral fiber content. Anyway, it was my turn to hold the meeting, so I was typing out the invitations. Each monthly meeting is supposed to have a theme or a purpose, so I wrote:

“Eating spaghetti and drinking red Italian wine in preparatory sacramental celebration of a new 900SS Ducati upon which a bank loan was just approved, bike as yet uncollected, still in Pennsylvania.” Yes, after only two years of hanging around Ducati dealerships, re-reading road tests and boring everyone with endless equivocation, I finally decided it was time to act.

This coming Friday my friend Bruce Finlayson (fellow Crud) and I will drive out to a place called Stahlstown, PA, where a friend of Bruce’s named Bob Smith has a Ducati shop, there to pick up a red, full-fairing 1992 SS and return, we hope, before the snow flies.

Earlier this year (alert readers will recall) I sold my old 1977 Ducati 900SS to buy a new Harley-Davidson Electra Glide Sport. I’ve had a great summer with the Harley, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that an FLHS is not a direct replacement for a Ducati 900SS, old or new. It’s kind of like selling your refrigerator to buy a stove. It’s nice to have a stove, but now you have no refrigerator. Owning both would be ideal.

So, I’ve held onto the Electra Glide but sold my Sportster to help pay for the new Ducati. One Harley is plenty, for my small-time collection, and it’s the smooth, torquey 80-incher that has won my heart over the long run.

The Sportster had a lot of functional overlap with my old Triumph, but the FLHS doesn’t really overlap with anything, visually or charismatically. It’s an Electra Glide, and-if you like the way it goes down the road in those great clopping Clydesdale hoofbeats, which I do-there ain’t no substitute.

Does all this swapping around and horse-trading make sense?

I didn’t think so. Nevertheless, it’s a done deal. We leave for Pennsylvania, dark and early, next Friday.

To a Ducati bevel-drive traditionalist, replacing an old SS with a new one may seem like a dubious exchange. The old Duck, after all, is a cleaner, simpler and more elegant design. Each piece of the bike is beautiful in itself, while the new one has a more composite appeal, the sum being more attractive than the individual parts. It’s hard to second-guess the future, but I would say that the old SS will probably prove to be the more enduring classic.

So, if I were a determined collector, and-most importantly-could afford it, I would have hung on to my old Ducati. At the time I bought my first 900SS back in 1980, it was the nicest sportbike I’d ever ridden. Brakes, handling, torque and speed were all marvelous, and that wonderful V-Twin sound....

But in 1990, 10 years later, Cycle World sent me to Italy for the introduction of the new 900SS. It was exactly the right venue for the bike:

three days of cruising on the highspeed autostrada, lapping on Ducati’s test track and riding over twisting Apennine mountain roads, some of them part of the old Mille Miglia race route, through villages, farms and vineyards, all in crisp, clear autumn weather with the whole landscape turning colors of gold and russet.

And over those country roads-my favorite kind-the new SS was simply magical.

As light and spidery feeling as a lean 600, it had tremendous midrange wallop coming off corners, a nice cammy rush at the upper end, quick and agile steering, superb brakes and that wonderful V-Twin sound....

On the afternoon of our ride over Futa Pass, Cycle's Steve Anderson and I stopped at a café in a mountain village for a break and a shot of espresso. We sat at an outdoor table, sipping coffee and looking at the red Ducatis parked in the warm afternoon sunshine against an ancient stone wall. As I recall, neither of us could stop grinning. It was that kind of bike.

In the two years since that day, I’d hoped there would be a statute of limitations on the persistence of the romantic aura cast by that fine moment, or on my memory of the bike’s speed and general lightness of being.

So far, no relief. In the meantime, I’ve tried to be practical and hardheaded about the 900SS. For instance, I know that the dry clutches are giving trouble-they squawk and grab after a few thousand miles. There’s supposedly a factory fix on the way, but no one seems to have seen it yet. Also, there’s the desmo valve adjustments to consider, along with the usual scattered electrical problems with fuses, connectors and the like. The bikes are not perfect by any means.

So, in the interest of truth and cynicism, I decided to re-examine my enthusiasm for new Ducatis in the cold light of a Wisconsin, rather than Italian, autumn day. Last week, my friend Dan Wilson in Milwaukee kindly let me take his 1991 900SS out for a long ride, just to see if I still wanted one after all this time.

The conclusion?

I have to make some pasta now, and uncork a couple of bottles of Barolo. The Cruds will be here in an hour.