The Leftover King

The Leftover King

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

JUST AS I WAS MAKING LUNCH—A SLIMFast and banana smoothie in the blender to atone for all the food I ate over the holidays—the dogs started barking like crazy. Our two big dogs looked out the window and barked at something specific, while our ancient, half-blind dachshund, Tuffy, howled at the ceiling, just by way of canine solidarity. I looked out the window and saw an Allied Van Lines truck in our driveway.

“Ah, that would be my motorcycle,” I explained to the dogs.

I put on my winter coat and went outside, shaking hands with the two delivery guys while the dogs sniffed the truck tires. The driver was a hip-looking dude wearing a Harley do-rag on his head. “We got your bike,” he said, opening the cargo doors. “All the way from Colorado. Looks like a beauty.”

I peered into the back of the truck and there it was, a brand-new 2003 Ducati ST4S in lustrous dark metallic gray with deep red Marchesini wheels, lashed down to a wooden pallet. The golden Öhlins shock and carbon-fiber rear fender sparkled at me provocatively in the gray winter light. A beauty indeed.

The two guys unstrapped the bike, angled it carefully onto the hydraulic lift and lowered it to ground level. I signed a few delivery forms, and they kindly helped me push the bike through the crusted snow, down to my workshop. A recent snowstorm, followed by freezing rain, had left our lawn looking like a frozen waterfall. Ice axes and crampons would have been useful.

We nevertheless wrestled the bike into the garage without dropping it. I closed the doors and turned up the thermostat. “Gonna be a while before you get to ride this thing,” the driver said.

“I don’t mind,” I said. “Now I have something to look at until spring.”

He nodded. “I’ve got two Harleys, and some nights I just go out to the garage to look at ’em.”

When the delivery guys had left, I pulled up a chair and sat back to ponder the bike.

So. Another Ducati, the ninth one I’ve owned in my lifetime, and only the second bike I’d ever bought, sight unseen, from far away. The genesis of this purchase had been oddly convoluted and fatedriven, to say the least.

I’d owned a dark blue ST2 and liked it pretty well-even though I could never find a truly comfortable seat for it-but sold the bike two years ago when I got hepatitis and realized I wouldn’t be riding for at least a year.

Then, last spring, I put that money down on a KTM 950 Adventure, one of the most exhilarating backroad bikes I’ve ever owned. I’d hoped the KTM would be my all-purpose, do-everything bike, and it almost was-solo-but Barb didn’t like traveling on it. The seat, she noted, was both overly tall and hard as a rock. “I feel like I’m sitting way up on a great big skinny grasshopper,” she said. Thumbs-down for touring to Alaska or Nova Scotia, two possible trips on our horizon. So I decided to keep the KTM, selfishly, but look for a better longdistance two-up tourer.

Lo and behold, last fall I walked into our nearest BMW dealer, Mischler’s in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and they were blowing the last of their leftover 2004 R1150RTs out the door at a huge discount, what with the new R1200RT about to be released.

Now, if there’s one thing I can’t resist, it’s several thousand dollars suddenly dropped from the price tag of a bike I admire. I have a long history of buying motorcycles that are heavily discounted at the end of their production runsNorton 850 Commando, Kawasaki KZ1000, Ducati 900SS, etc.-just as new models flood into the showroom. It’s a combination of slow reflexes, natural cheapness and a taste for the karmic moment.

I seem always drawn to that forgotten corner of the showroom where dust settles on gas tanks and batteries expire from lack of stimulation. But then great bikes are like Robert Johnson blues tunes to me; they don’t necessarily become less desirable because they’re old. So I went to the bank and soon we had a dark silver RT in my garage.

One week later, a friend of mine crashed the KTM and wrote it off. Now I had the big, posh BMW and an insurance check in place of the KTM. No lithe, light and lively sportbike for the winding backroads.

My friend Terry Jacobson, another KTM 950 owner, asked if I was going right out to buy another one.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think there’s another 950 in my future, but

prices for 2005 have gone way up.

Maybe the crash-and the decline of the dollar-are a cosmic sign I should try something different for a while.”

That karma thing again. Also that cheapness thing.

A few weeks ago, my riding buddy Mike Mosiman called from Ft. Collins, Colorado, and asked if I’d made any decision on a replacement bike.

“Oddly enough,” I said, “I’m thinking of looking for a used Ducati ST4S. I got a chance to borrow one from our friends Randy and Debbie Lewis on a ride with Barb in northern California last summer and I was reminded what a great bike it is-and fast. Like my old ST2, but with another 30 horsepower and better suspension. If I could find a used one in dark silver and red. I’d probably buy it. That was always my favorite color on those bikes.”

“Our local dealer, Northern Colorado BMW/Ducati, has two of them on the floor,” Mike said point blank. “Brandnew 2003 leftovers in dark silver and red, and he just lowered the price big time to get rid of them. One has ABS and the other doesn’t. The ABS version is $800 extra.

So of course I called the dealer and ordered the non-ABS version. ABS has saved my life twice, but $800 is still $800...

It cost $648 to ship the bike back here, but I figure I can make that up by watching the Ducati every evening until spring, instead of going to the movies.