Random Lines: Another Turn on Life’s Twisted Highway
The full-bodied bark of a Conti-ed Ducati Super Sport charging hard along the tight mountain road echoes through the valley from three, four miles away and hits me deep inside.
Working the bike is some maniac I knew as a motorcycle journalist, someone I lost touch with a couple of years back. There’s a notebook in the bum pocket of his ragged jeans, and it’s filled with rough-scrawled fuel figures and random lines that mean next to nothing against his present preoccupation, fanging the Ducati towards the max. I can picture him cranking it down harder and harder, until the header pipes start to graunch against gravel and the Silver Dots begin to shimmy and smoulder. I can share his satisfaction, wringing the big twin out to 7800 rpm change-up. Oh, yes. I can feel for all that, but the bike is fast approaching the end of its ride. I must prepare to face its rider; perhaps, too, for the last time. I’m not relishing this confrontation.
The bike crests the last rise and draws back to a raucous, crackling overrun, blatting down through the gears. Soon the hot engine’s contractive pinging is all that remains of the Ducati’s glorious noise, from a roar to a whimper which blends into a rich country silence that gives passive background to our thoughts. We’re sitting on the porch of this broken shack I’ve come to with escape in mind. I’m philosophical — at least I’m trying to be — though my emotions are playing country music to a tune of some remorse. My old friend is mulling up some Writers Block and letting me know how good he thinks the Ducati is. I don’t need that. I should know by now. Two and a half years I’ve enjoyed the thing, and nearly five years with Ducatis all up, so I have some idea of what it is I’m now having to give away. He’s only just discovering it; it’s still a new 900SS to him. He’s into two-week road tests.
Drugs I’ve been giving up years have delivered their usual weariness and neither of us is making much sense. He’s serving up another tired story about motorcycling’s rough-road fundamentals which I’m in no great mood to hear, and I make a couple of clumsy, stuttering attempts to remind him that the 20th century is basically a huge, expensive nightmare. He looks up in a moment of astonishment that stretches into an eternity.
“It’s had its moments,” he eventually replies. And indeed it has.
“The Green Frame Desmo, for example,” he continues breathlessly. “The Conti muffler, the 40mm Dell’Orto pumper . . .”
And what about the Volkswagen Beetle?
I try to think about what to say next. I try out a run of tactful, gradual methods of breaking the news to him. Perhaps a humorous anecdote, some emotional candour, a plea of insanity maybe, a convoluted legal document, a column for Two Wheels? But subtlety escapes me, so I blurt out the stark truth.
“This is the last ride we’ll be doing together. I’m stone broke and I’ve three years of study ahead of me. I’m selling the Ducati.”
I watch on remorsefully as he reels backwards, trying to find steady footing. Crashing into a strainer post, he staggers to a standstill and tries tightening his act. He looks a mess. The effect is like amphetamine or shock; desperate, like he’s just tossed the Duke away.
“You can’t sell your bike, it’s your lifestyle, your image, your credibility, your self-respect.”
“That’s bullshit,” I tell him. “It’s only a motorbike, nothing more. A pinnacle example of a motorbike, to be sure, a bike which best captures the kind of motorcycling indulgence I appreciate the most, and which has allowed me a lot of great experiences and a bag full of great memories. But it’s only a motorbike after all. I’ve used it and enjoyed it, and now it has to go.”
“Don’t do it!” he pleads. “That bike is a statement! It’s a jolt of bloody perspective in this dismal, desensitised, mad plastic world of modern motorcycling. Not only the bloody Japanese, but BMW, Laverda, even bloody Ducati these days, for God’s sake — they don’t even have kickstarts any more . . . It’s enough to turn a normal bloke to Harley-Davidson. No, you should keep that SS, pal. It’s a stands-out-like-dog’s-balls glaring reminder of what Real Motorcycling is all about: obnoxiously loud, totally anti-social. It’s a menace and a finger to the smug, smart-arsed easy-pleased, crappy suits and white underpants and their blandly anonymous metallic-tan four-cylinder disposable motorcars. It’s a kick in the arse of the establishment worldview, it’s demonstrable evidence of the kind of concerned citizen you are!”
You can see how he’s not taking this so well. His bottom lip is trembling, his eyes are moist and confused.
“You’ll regret it, pal,” he snarls. “How long do you think you’re going to last without the Duke, eh? Remember that delirious line holding? The suppleness of the suspension once it actually begins to work over 150 km/h? That lustful surge from 4000 to 8000 revs? How are you going to live without that? Have you thought about that?”
Yes. It’s difficult.
“It’s a sellout,” he continues. “Think of all you’ve gone through to keep that bike. Remember when you moved from Adelaide? — less than a hundred in the bank, but at least you had a pristine Ducati. That was inspiring stuff, you could talk it how you walked it, or rode it, in those days. You had my respect then. Now you’re throwing it all away. Your bike. Your principles.”
He can sense this is grating me, and I tell him why. The way he’s going on, it’s like I’ve decided on selling the bike to buy an engagement ring or something. It’s not like that at all. I’ve been offered a serious opportunity to live in extreme poverty and study for three years, and I’ve gladly accepted. It means I’ll have neither the time nor the money to make proper use of the bike, and I can’t pass up my kick at the future by clinging to something as totally indulgent as a Ducati SS. I’ve protracted this misspent youth too long already.
“Your priorities are stuffed.”
I tell him I don’t know about that. I slowed down after my accident on the Suzuki, but he probably wouldn’t know about that one yet. Anyway, I have decided. Motorcycling has been a symptom of my lifestyle for a lot of miles, since the evocative pages of Two Wheels first found their way into my sweaty palms and forced a severe jolt upon my impressionable pre-pubescent psyche. I was a loathsome adolescent, and I made a regular spectacle of myself pawing over the 750 Sport and GT Ducatis when they arrived at Dave Basham’s bike shop. Motorcycling has been a serious affliction of mine for so long that it’s probably permanent. I’d like to keep the Ducati — like I regret selling almost every bike I’ve had — but things have changed. The decision’s easier because I have no choice.
“You’re full of shit. You really are. You’d rationalise anything, you bastard; you’ve lost track of how to feel. You’ll probably end up in a safari suit with a CXS500 or something.”
His emotion swells uncontrollably. He belts me hard in the head with a half-bottle of Bundaberg Rum. I wake early with daybreak light, sprawled out on this uncomfortable porch with a heavy head and an empty bottle of Bundaberg beside me.
There’s 600 miles ahead of me today, tapping into high archetype country — down from the mountains and along the coast — and maybe stopping off in Bairnsdale to yak with old Leonie for an hour or so, then back home the last 200 to Melbourne.
It’s a good last ride for the SS; a pleasant last taste of that incomparable Ducati experience. They’ve been good years alright. There were times I’d thought, cranked through a fast sweeper, that this bike was built just for me; but it never was, of course. I’m finding it difficult turning my revered bike into an investment, into rent and food, but I’ll get over it. A 3 1/2 Morini might hide the loss, and the difference would make a comfortable float for a while. Who knows, another Ducati might lurk somewhere on along the road ahead, wherever the damn thing goes.
By Jeff Fereday. Two Wheels, March 1985
Copyright: Estate of Jeff Fereday.
In 2013, Jeff’s wife Susan published the complete collection of Random Lines in a book of the same name. Priced at $35, you can order a copy here.
