Rude Awakening

February 13, 2012

Think Mouse: winter is coming and it's time to seek out a place to store food, make a nest and curl up until the spring sunshine brings you out, blinking and shivering, into the pale day of a new year. So, being a diligent mouse, you seek and scurry, until you've found the ideal spot: a dark, sheltered chamber with just two circular tunnels into it. Even better, it's carpeted with a thick, ridged, woody substance that's warm to the touch and which can easily be shredded to create a cosy, safe nest. And, right behind this Mouse Four Seasons, there's a dry pit which is perfect for storing nuts and seeds. And so the months pass...

AA: Absolutely Abominable

March 08, 2011

I had to curtail a ride today due to a nail in my front tyre - with it going from 36psi to 10psi in 3 miles, I wasn't going to get thirty miles home unaided. Called the AA (via Ducati Assistance) from Springkerse. Three hours later they turned up, with a truck with a comedy bike attachment that hung off a piece of wire and looked like one of the ore carts that Indiana Jones used to get chased through mines in. Rather less comedy when the guy was fiddling around with the securing straps and the bike promptly tipped sideways out of the device and onto the ground. Result: mirror; bar end; hand guard, pillion peg/hanger, pannier mount and, best of all, gouging one of Marchesini's finest forged alloy wheels on the way. Just as well I wasn't wearing my shiny new Observer's jacket at that point - I would have brought the IAM into serious disrepute.

0/10 also to J K motorcycles in Stirling for being "too busy" to help, despite my being 400 metres from them. 10/10 though to Strathearn Tyres in Crieff, who stayed open until I finally turned up then fixed the problem promptly and efficiently - they even managed to have a spare Diablo Rosso Corse on standby in case the nail had caused internal damage to the tyre. And a big fat kick in a very sensitive place to the bloody AA, who were, in timing, design and execution, culpably useless.

Plus Ça Change (Tweaking Part II)

June 15, 2010

I've had my Multistrada for just over a month now – time enough to find out the good, the bad and the incomprehensible about it. And yes, it IS as good as the reviews say it is (my own full review has been much-delayed by the simple fact that I've been out riding it!) but it ain't entirely perfect, so here's my thoughts to date on what can be improved in future and what needs to be fixed by Ducati right now. It's a very short list, considering that this is a brand new bike designed to appeal to a much wider market than Ducatis of yore – and, by definition, a market less accommodating of Italian, ah, idiosyncrasies. But here they are, in all their ignominy – let's see what Ducati come back with: