Red Bikes of the North
Red bikes of the North
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
“FUNNY HOW WE CALL THEM CANADA geese,” I told my buddy Pat Donnelly, “as if this were where they really live, even though they spend half the year down south. Why don’t we call them Florida geese, or Louisiana geese?”
“I don’t know,” Pat said patiently. This is the kind of brilliant question he has learned to endure without flinching in our many years of friendship.
We were standing on the cold, windswept shores of Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay in the little town of Blind River, Ontario, watching the geese fly north into an unseasonably chilly spring.
We’d stopped for the night at a local motel, partly because we were tired from driving all the way from Madison, Wisconsin, and partly because Blind River appears in a Neal Young song called “Long May You Run,” which Young says was written about his first car, so it seemed like an appropriately mechanical, gearhead kind of place to stop.
In front of the motel sat my Ford van, loaded with leathers, helmets, lawn chairs, donut crumbs and two Ducatis, my 996 and Pat’s 900SS-SP. We were headed to Mosport, Ontario, just east of Toronto, for a track weekend with the Ducati Owners Club of Canada.
Last summer, Pat and I went to the DOCC weekend at Grattan, Michigan, where everyone had praised Mosport as “a real Ducati track,” meaning fast, smooth and full of big, sweeping turns. “You’ll love it on your 996,” track marshal Claus Flieschman had told me. “You can really open it up.”
When you are in your mid-50s, of course, this sometimes sounds like a mixed blessing. I have reached that unfortunate age where, at around 140 mph, I begin to visualize the big circlip that holds my rear axle nut in place, and to wonder casually whether I put it on right. Still, I love fast tracks for sheer speed euphoria, and because hitting sixth gear on a sportbike with the throttle pegged is a form of private revenge for the two big speeding tickets I got this year. (“You say 71 mph is dangerously fast? In what gear? First?”)
When I ran at Grattan last year, the 996 was dead stock, but over the winter I spiffed things up with a new set of Remus carbon-fiber canisters, performance chip, carbon-fiber front fender (big speed increase here), a bigger rear sprocket and a set of Dunlop D208 GPs to replace the flogged OEM rubber.
In the morning, we left Blind River headed toward Sudbury, stopping briefly at a small campground where Pat and I camped on our first motorcycle trip in the fall of 1968. A cold, rain-soaked odyssey to Montreal that would have cured any sane person of motorcycle touring forever, but had no apparent effect on us. Except for my buying a van with a heater, of course. From Sudbury, we turned south on Highway 69 through Parry Sound toward Mosport. This was not the fast way from Wisconsin to Mosport, but we’d decided to take an extra day for a great arc through the scenic north woods of Upper Michigan and Ontario on two-lane roads. Well worth it, even if we missed seeing Gary, Indiana.
Arriving at Mosport late on Friday afternoon, we ran our bikes through tech and met old friends from the DOCC. This club is the very fulfillment of my private theory that the short riding season here in the North Country simultaneously intensifies our passion for motorcycling and makes us crazy as bedbugs, much as extended prison time or six years of high school might do. It also causes us to drink beer in the evening, by way of compensation. The DOCC is a fun, lively bunch.
After tech, Pat and I checked into a Howard Johnson’s in nearby Bowmanville, found a good Italian restaurant in Oshawa called Fazio’s, ate enough to unravel my Valentino Rossi Lookalike Weight Reduction Plan, and then got up early the next
morning to make the orientation session for riders who’d never seen the track before. An hour later, we were lapping.
Claus was right. Mosport is a great Ducati track. It’s also just a great track, period. A high-speed rollercoaster nestled in real hills, with blind brows, hero dips and steep climbs. Big fun. My new pipes sounded much faster than the old ones, the chip and gearing were perfect, and the new tires were the best I’ve ever ridden on.
When I went out for my first open session, I was reminded why Ducatis win so many races: a) They put power down in big, broad, useable gobs of friendly torque at any rpm; and b) they don’t want you to fall down. The chassis is your friend-it absorbs your own imperfections like a blotter. Always a good thing, in my case.
I ran a little hot over the hill into Turn 4 on one lap and suddenly remembered the immortal words of my friend (and fellow DOCC member) Mike Cecchini, who once said, “When you get in trouble, just lean over farther.” Simple advice, but on the 996 it always works. So far.
And it seemed to work for a lot of people. Speeds were high, but there were only three minor crashes all weekend, among 200 entrants.
Most of the bikes were from the 916 family, with 900SSs next in popularity, mixed with Monsters, 851s, 888s, a few Guzzis, Aprilias, Cagivas and a good selection of vintage bikes-bevel-drive Twins, Singles and a few Harley-Aermacchis. The event is for all European and American bikes, but Ducatis are the glue that holds the thing together.
After our last track session on Sunday, Claus invited a bunch of us back to his house, 20 minutes from the circuit, to have pizza and beer while we watched World Superbike at Silverstone. There, Troy Bayliss put on the most amazing display of rain riding-or riding of any kind-I’ve ever seen. On his red 998.
On the drive home the next morning, I said to Pat, “What would all of us have been doing this weekend if Ducati had gone broke, which it almost did, back in the Eighties?”
Pat thought about that for a minute, and then he said, “I don’t know.”
I didn’t know, either. It was another of those pointless questions, like the one about Canada geese. Sometimes the world unfolds just as it should. □
