[Jeff Higgins]

Just over a month (and a couple thousand miles already...) into my Ducati ownership experience, I thought I would share my impressions. Being a lifelong Harley rider, I can't help but make some comparisons in that regard. So here goes...

The Ducati is an absolutely wonderful machine for its intended purpose. It fills the niche I envisioned for it with aplomb; I honestly can't think of another machine that could do so as well as this old 900 SS. It is, however, a very narrowly defined niche. Neither the bike nor I are happy when we try to expand its role outside of my original intent for it.

It is an after work, Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon, or what have you - toy. It is not a commuter, not a tourer. It is not even an all day ride. Not so much because of physical comfort or anything like that, but more because of how it demands to be ridden.

My Harleys are actually far better handling, far less demanding bikes when ridden at "normal" (i.e. more or less legal) speeds. The Harleys are more intuitive, natural, "care free" if you will, for just be-bopping around. The Ducati is unhappy and demanding at the posted speed limits on any given road. It is twitchy and overly responsive, like hitching a thoroughbred to a plough. It stops too fast, accelerates too fast, turns too abruptly... Everybody around me just seems to be in the way, plodding along at an impossibly slow pace.

Until it's free to run; until we are alone together on some lonely back road. Then everything changes. Everything starts to work. At a certain percentage over any given posted limit, it all begins to make sense. It becomes rather effortless to make some serious time on this thing. Not necessarily some furious hell-bent-for-election pace, but (continuing the horse analogy) just at a good solid "canter". It's capable of much more, of course, but this is where it starts to get "happy".

Unfortunately, that "certain percentage over" is somewhere in the neighborhood of about half again what the powers that be (who are so concerned with my safety) think I ought to be doing. Oh, to live in a place where they would leave such matters up to me... This is a truly wonderful machine, trapped in the wrong country. Much like our beloved 911's. Those who neither understand nor care to understand have done everything they can think of to hamstring these thoroughbreds, out of fear and contempt. Oh well... The Ducati (and the 911) and I won't let that slow us down much...