We decided to eat at this place on the way to Destination Daytona, that a friend had told me about. He got most of the details about the place wrong. He gave me the wrong name, but it was similar, and he had the wrong city that it was in. He said it was called Little Philly's and it was Famous Philly's, and he also said that it was in Edgewater, and it was in New Smyrna Beach. When we hit New Smyrna and didn't see the place, we opted for a little spot called Pappa's Drive In. The sign said Famous Burgers, so we took a shot. Now, it wasn't the best burger that I've ever had, but it was pretty good, and cheap too. You can't argue with that. Once we were fueled up, we had to get our hoodies out, because on the ride there, it started getting chilly. I had mine tucked under my cargo bungy on the back seat, and he had his in his saddle bags. He rides a Harley Street Glide, which is in complete contrast to Saki. It wasn't about what we were riding, it was about riding.
We were hoodied up, and ready to go. The next stop was in Daytona Beach at the Ducati dealer. They used to be located at Destination Daytona, but it turns out that they moved. Oh yeah, here is the thing about Destination Daytona, it isn't actually in Daytona, it is just north of Orland Beach, which is north of Daytona. Anyway, the Ducati dealer was easy enough to find, it was Just off of US 1 about a street down. We parked our bikes on their loading ramp, and walked around to the front. They had some beautiful used bikes outside. One of them was the Ducati beast known as the Diavel. It is I guess considered a cruiser bike, but it is just unadulterated power. It has forward foot controls on it, and the guy inside later told us, that it has a 40 degree lean angle. If you don't know what that means, here is the explanation. Bikes don't turn like cars, well they do, but only at slow speeds. At faster speeds, a turn is handled by counter steering. Here is the idea as simple as I can put it. In order to turn a bike left, you turn the bars right. It sounds confusing I know, but stick with me, you'll get it soon enough. The reason for the counter steer, is that the bike also leans into the turn, and in order to keep the front tire from locking up and flipping the bike, you have to steer opposite of what you would expect. I feel like I'm dong a real bad job of explaining this. The lean into that turn dictates how fast you can take that corner, the further the lean, the faster you can go. Every bike has a lean angle that it can reach. Moto GP guys are hitting 65 degree lean angles, When I have a tight turn that I can take at speed, I'm at about a 45 to 50 degree lean angle. A cruiser taking a 40 degree lean angle, would normally have the foot pegs digging into the road, that is why the Diavel's lean angle is so surprising. Enough about that though. The moral of the story is, that the Ducati Diavel scares the hell out of me. It has a huge engine, it's light weight for it's class, and has a severe lean angle for how wide it is. It is truly a beast.
With the beast out of the way, let's talk about a monster. The Ducati Monster in particular. I think I may have found my next bike. It isn't a super sport like I was thinking it would be, but the new Ducati Monster 797. It isn't out yet, but Ducati was saying that it is an introductory bike to the Ducati line up. The monster is what is known as a "naked bike". It is the original street fighter style bike. They call it naked, because that it is a sport bike without a fairing on it. It has a tiny windshield at best, but more than likely only a headlight and the display are in front of you. I had seen a few things about this new Monster, and I was interested. even though it is being called the 797 it has an 803 cc motor in it, and from what i'm hearing, it is fast, not quite the 1200 cc Monster fast, but it would be a step up from my 650. I asked the guy if he had any idea what the price was going to be on it, and he told me that it was starting at $9300, which seems like a lot, but for a Ducati, that is cheap. You get all the beauty of Italian design at a lower mid range cost. He also told me, that there was going to be a 797 plus model that was going to come with bluetooth. You could run your phone through the display on the bike, and it would tell you then song you were listening to if you had a bluetooth headset in your helmet. I thought that was pretty cool, but he believes that all Ducati's are going to be fitted with that within time. While I was there, I took a good look at the Monsters they had, and I've always liked the look of that bike.
After taking an extended look at the 1299 Panigale, I'm pretty sure that my buddy was seriously considering that bike< It is a work of art, we said our thank you's to the guy, and made our way out. We stopped just outside the door to take a look at a little Triumph T100 that someone had did a little custom work on. The put saddle bags and matching seat and tank pads on it, that were in brown leather. It was a great looking bike. We couldn't figure out if it was for sale or not, so we just walked back to our bikes. This is when I did something incredibly stupid. I backed my bike down to the side walk, so that I could turn and pull out of where we were parked. It was on an incline, and as I was pulling to get near the road. I stopped in mid turn, which is maybe one of the dumbest things you can do. Saki started tipping over. I caught it, and killed the engine so that if would jolt on me if I let go of the clutch, but I was in such an awkward position, that I couldn't lift it back up. I wasn't beginning to lose it, and thought that I was going to have to try to set it down as gentle as possible, so that I would bend or break anything, when my buddy parked his bike real fast, and ran over to help me get it back up. I was so thankful for that. Lesson learned, and it was a lesson that I already knew, but sometimes you do really dumb things, like stopping in the middle of a turn. You should never have the bars turned on a motorcycle when you are stopped, unless it is on the kickstand. The bike wants to lean when you turn, that brings us back to lean angle and all that good stuff. We won't get into that though. Needless to say, we were finally able to take off, and head to the Harley dealership in Destination.
We made pretty good time, and got there about 2:45 in the afternoon. The place is huge. I think it is the largest Harley-Davidson dealership in the county if not the world. There are hundreds of new bikes there, and a few more hundred on the second floor that are used, as well as some bikes that are only for display, because they are classic museum type bikes. We walked around and looked at everything they had. They were some beautiful bikes. We went upstairs because we didn't want to miss the used bikes that had some with custom features and what not. The really cool part about the upstairs, is that there is this large wall of windows, and on the other side is the service department. You can look at all the bikes that they are working on right there while you look at bikes for sale.
While we were up there, we happened across a couple of service bikes. Those were old bikes that were trike style, but they had a large cooler on the back of them. It was so delivery people could transport fresh meat, or milk or anything that needed refrigerated. My buddy is a brewer, and I said that that should be there brewery vehicle. We were thinking of what we could do with something like that, and we came up with the possibility of putting a couple of kegs in the back with taps on it, so you could serve fresh beer. It would be the coolest brewery delivery vehicle anywhere. I don't know if it will happen, but if it does, I want to help with the design of it.
We spent close to an hour in there, and my buddy was in search of a new helmet, and oddly, they didn't have any there, at least none that we found. In the same complex of buildings, is a place called J&P Cycles. They carry all kinds of motorcycle parts, clothing, helmets, and basically anything bike related. Nothing there really caught his fancy, so we decided to head south on 95 to hit a beer bar. I know, I said I don't drink when I'm riding, but I will allow myself a single pint from time to time. It was great place known as the House of Beer. They had a bunch of local beers on tap, which I thought was fantastic. I had a sour ale from Grimm, which was rather tasty, and it was only a 12 oz. pour, so I managed to come in under a pint.
By the time we were done, the sun was down, and it was beginning to get colder, and we had a long ride ahead of us. My buddy asked if I needed gas, but I checked the range on my bike, and it said I had 95 miles to go before I ran out. I said, let's give it a try and see how far I really get. We took off down 95 and headed to a few exits down, so that we could catch a road that would connect us easily back onto US 1. It would take us a little longer to get home, but we wouldn't have to go as fast, so the wind chill wouldn't be as bad, not to mention, that most of US 1 is lit up, and made it easier to see. I kept the range view on the display to see how my mileage was going, with 65 miles left on the range, it began to flash and went to three dashes ---. I couldn't tempt fate any longer, and found the first gas station and pulled in. When I filled up, I only had to put 3 gallons in, which meant that I had 1 gallon left to go on, I probably could have made it home, considering that by that fill up, my trip said that we had gone 155.2 miles, and that I averaged 51.2 miles to the gallon. Not bad for a sport bike. That distance was from fill up to fill up. I rode a little over 200 miles on Friday, and that put me real close to my goal of hitting 1500 miles on Saki by the end of the weekend. A little spoiler here, I hit it today, and ended with 1516 on the odometer. Success.
We had a great time riding around and looking at beautiful bikes. It was an adventure not without little problems, but ones that made us learn and become better riders in the end. We had to pull over at one point, because my buddy hit something metal, and we had to check his bike for any damage or to see if anything had fallen off. Fortunately everything was alright. I even check my bike to see if anything had fallen off of it. I was in the lead at that time, so anything was possible. Saki was good, nothing was missing.
There is so much more to talk about from this weekend, like news about my bartender, but I've written enough already, and I'm sure your eyes are sore from reading this off a screen, so I will leave you with a picture I took of Saki yesterday after a ride.
Peace in and goodnight.
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