A fairly great week, with real ups and downs.

Catch me if you can . . . .

Well, I've been caught. Just touching base with everyone about my tentative plans for the next few days, which sound fun, although not completely drama free, haha. It's looking like I'll hit the travelling SF meet on Wednesday evening, maybe not right at six but closer to 8. Details about where can be found HERE --> SF meet, Wednesday.

As for today, I had originally planned to get some errands run, check in with my buddy Brad (for a chai latte - my first ever, and it was good!), and then see what was up for this evening. Looks like I'll be buttoning this bike back together instead. The beautiful, gorgeous, Sport Classic 1000 S that I was using, courtesy of Ducati North America, was taken down by a wayward Toyota this afternoon, breaking off the right footpeg and scratching up the bodywork on the left side. Nothing too serious, but Mutha#&*@^%(@*#$& I was bent, particularly because it seemed like the guy was about to drive off without stopping. When confronted, he finally gave me his information after I snapped a photo of his license plate. Anyway, this is now a matter for insurance to handle, but I have to admit, I crawled around on the street checking out the damage to the bike just like I would have to one of my racebikes. I had lots of room to crawl, because the guy drove off and left the bike laying on it's side after I got the insurance/driver's license info. Bah.

Later in the week I was expecting to do a cool photoshoot with the bike, all part of an article I'm writing about some of the differences between the road-going and racing Ducati's. Not sure if I'll end up taking shots of this one - and maybe they'll only be from the right side, hahaha, but we'll figure it out. One thing is for sure - no stress on this break, I have enough of that from work!

I've now finished switching the rt. passenger peg to take the place of the rider peg, which was snapped off when the truck bumper smacked it, and at least the girl is rideable again.

All in all, it's been great this past week. Memories that will stick are riding over the Bay Bridge with the cityscape shining back at me through the morning fog, bombing down 280 on my way to Alice's for some apple pie ala mode and rootbeer, meeting Tygaboy (Chris Baker) in Petaluma for some carbon fiber instruction, knocking back some brews with the guys at Zeit while eating a burger, and all in all, just revelling in the USA-ness of SF. I haven't had to use my giant headphones at all, which is something I do to keep the usual outside noise from bothering me too much.

Some negative things that bugged me about this trip? I lost a bag full of stickers and my digital camera at the race, not sure if it was lifted (likely) or I somehow misplaced it (possible, but unlikely). To make matters worse, later in the week I took off my jacket and threw it in with a couple others on a sofa at the Levende Lounge on Mission/Duboce and when I got it back later in the night, my iPod shuffle was gone. Hmmm, seems like there are definitely a lot more sticky fingers than I remember, haha, and I'm not even in Europe!

About the race fuel at the track? Yes, we get that delivered at each race, and we're not allowed to transport it ourselves because it's a hazardous material. We'll often give it to whoever is around if we have any left after an event, and if you were watching Marlboro Ducati on Sunday afternoon, you would have seen them siphoning the fuel out of the barrels and into their rentacars, haha. Can you imagine the mileage an H2 would get with full on race gas? I think we gave about seven drums to Celtic racing, and I hope they put it to good use.

Still upset about the bike, but hey, it's SF, and this kind of stuff is rampant. Memorable quotes from the incident include, "How the F*&^ do you not see a bright red motorcycle parked 5 feet behind you when you walked up from that side of the F(*&%# truck?", and "Oh, now that I've got photos of your license plate and the bike, now you want to give me your insurance information?", and "Are you drunk?!?".

Sigh, can't win them all, hahaha.

Posted by Liam on July 31, 2007 04:19 AM | Permalink