August 13, 2005
Just got back from breaking in the new ST4s ABS. 1,600 miles from San Diego up to Mendocino and back, the vast majority of the roads being twisty! Of course, I was wiped out after the week, and Dad had to hustle back to North Carolina on his GS :-) Pictures available here.

May 8, 2005
Finally fixed up the Monster. Replaced the dented tank with one from an anthracite model, fixed the clutch/brake reservoirs (not shown in the image), added some carbon bits, and it looks like a new-ish bike again.

May 8, 2004
Went to the Moto Guzzi Rally in Prescott, Arizona last weekend. Good time, cool bikes. All of the images are here. The only drawback was Will's Monster had a clutch problem (apparently the factory installed one of the clutch plates backward, which isn't a good thing) and he had to ride home in the truck. Highway 89 outside of Prescott had some of the nicest twisties I've seen - maybe next year I'll be able to ride!

October 20, 2003
If you were directed here from the Ducati Monster site, my apologies for now. At some point, I'll get things updated and have a proper SoCal Monster Hooligan Association site, but until then I recommend you head back to the message boards and enjoy the conversation there. The SoCal group is using that site for all its organizing anyway :-)

July 5, 2003
Carolynn and I met up with my dad in Flagstaff, AZ, on June 26 for a little motorcycle touring. My dad's done a lot of riding (15k - 20k miles/year) and has ridden multi-thousand mile trips before. Carolynn and I rode from San Marcos to Azusa once. So, needless to say, this was quite an experience. It was a good time. Just over 2,000 miles in 8 days, including a day off (by choice) and almost a day off (due to an electrical problem on the ST2). We rode some great roads, saw some awesome sights, and would definitely do it again. I would probably consider a different motorcycle, however, if we were going to do a lot of long distance riding. All the pictures (300+) can be viewed here. I don't have captions yet (or probably ever), but they're in rough chronological order. We stayed/visited Primm, NV; Flagstaff, AZ; Lee's Ferry/Navajo Bridge; the North Rim of the Grand Canyon; Monument Valley; Glen Canyon; Capitol Reef; Torrey, UT; Escalante, UT; Bryce Canyon; Zion; and stayed in Mesquite, NV before riding the last, hellish 400+ miles in hot and windy conditions down the 15 home.

May 26, 2003
I've taken some recent pictures of the Monster and the ST2.

May 13, 2003
The Cycle Cat rear sets for the S4 are sold. Here's a picture of the rearsets mounted on an S4 in case you are interested.

March 17-19, 2003
I went to Freddie Spencer's High Performance Riding School. Probably the best $2k you can spend if you want to get better as a rider. Intense days, intense instruction (vs. some jackass following you around a track and saying "Now you're getting it, dude!"), and overall a great experience. I can't recommend it enough - even considering the cost. I've posted some photos - the dirt ones are pretty funny.

March 1, 2003
I bought a silver, 1998 ST2 - (picture 1, picture 2)

November 3-4, 2002
Had a track weekend of sorts. On Sunday went to Keith Code's intro school. To be honest, it wasn't much more than an open track day with not-so-great "instruction" periods in between the track sessions. Did you know that the right speed in a turn is (drumroll, please) the right speed? Ugh - what a waste of $695 (I used their bike). On Monday was an open track day put on by GP Motorcycles and Aprilia/Ducati of Oceanside. They had Aprilia Milles and a new 999 available for test rides. I took each out and was amazed how much quicker they are than the Monster. I wasn't dragging my knee or anything, but wish I had one so I could! Going back to the Monster felt slow at first, but I was running in the intermediate group and hanging pretty good with the "real" sport bikes. After one session a guy said something to the effect of "yeah, I was pretty bummed that a Monster went by me on my Mille." See, this is a pretty good motorcycle! In the third or fourth session of the day, however, things went horribly wrong in Turn 4, the slowest turn on the track. One minute things were great and the next I was slammed into the tarmac wondering what happened. The pain was intense in my chest - I was positive I smashed some bones. The ambulance was kind enough to pick me up and take me to the hospital, while my buddy John Egenberger was kind enough to put my damaged (again) Monster back in his trailer for transport home. Although nothing was broken, I could barely move, and after sitting at the ER for 5 1/2 hours I was glad John had come by to take me home.

The bike survived pretty well. The (nearly new) tank was dented as I again bent a clip-on. Also the right rear set got tweaked pretty good, but acted almost like a frame slider and kept the Termis safe. I scratched the clutch cover a tiny bit, and managed to shear the throttle grip pretty good. Tank aside, the cost of repairs ended up being around $200 except for the tank. I'm still not sure exactly what happened, but I think I rode in and increased my trail braking too much as I leaned the bike over. Thankfully I didn't collect anybody else and for the most part was okay. (Postscript - it took over three months for the pain in my chest to go away completely.)

October 14, 2002
My dad was out from North Carolina for my brother's wedding, and he brought a set of CRG Hindsight mirrors. I dumped the Napoleans and threw one of these on the left clip-on. I think it looks cleaner and hopefully will be functional.

September, 2002
I've finally managed to get the bike back into better-than-new condition. After the crash, in addition to the replacement parts, I added the following components: CycleCat clutch cover, CycleCat rearsets, a Nichols clutch basket, Barnett clutch, and an Ohlins shock. Kind of exciting - like a new bike, but without the worry of every single little scratch.

June 30, 2002
Yesterday was the first ride of the Southern California Monster Hooligans Association (SoCalMHA - our bottle of Italian wine and our dollar are, uh, in the mail, Higgie). There are some (not so good) pictures here. We had a good turnout - 13 Monsters, ranging from M620's to a Foggy S4. All in all had a good day - rode 150+ miles, met some people from the DML, and have plans to do it again. And nobody ended up in a ditch!

May 26, 2002
Had a crash today. Coming off an exit ramp, I managed to rear end a guy in a Honda Civic. Packed the Monster in tight underneath his rear fender, and managed to tumble down alongside the car myself. This is made all the more fun by having plans to leave tomorrow to go to my first track day. Tank is dented, clip on is bent, broke off the rear brake lever, and created a fine assortment of road rash on various other parts of the bike. (Estimate ends up being nearly $5,000.) Paul & Co. at GP Motorcycles are able to get me back together enough that I can do the track day, however, so all is not lost.

May 10, 2002
Went to GP this morning to take care of the clutch slave cylinder recall, and ended up with new meats. Michelin Pilot Sports, 120/70 and 180/55. Looking forward to seeing how they make a difference on the twisties this weekend. Also hope to get some track time on them Memorial Day at SOW.

February 27, 2002
Road Racing Clip-Ons. I was downtown San Diego running an errand on my lunch hour. Since I don't get down to GP much anymore, I thought I'd run by and check things out. Isaac mentioned that he had one pair of the clip-ons left in stock, so after considering for about 30 seconds, I bought them. He said I should be able to do it myself, and I was able to figure it out. Thanks to the DML for keeping archives and to Trent Geerdes for listing his installation instructions on a website. These ended up making a much bigger difference than I would have guessed in both how the bike looks and how it feels when I ride. Despite lots of commentary from folks who had done this, I couldn't believe that they'd make as big a difference as they did. I guess I've gotta see things in real life to believe :-)

June 10, 2001
I added some bar-end mirrors, and broke down and put on Termignoni high-mount carbon slip-ons and the DP ECU that comes with them. The guys at GP also opened up the airbox and put in a K&N filter. I also did as much as I could without cutting or buying and reduced the size of the rear fender/license plate mount. The tag reflected the flash from the camera so it doesn't show, but (yes, I'm a dork) it reads "MOSTRO 9" and I dig it :-)

In The Beginning...

I wanted a motorcycle a long time ago. Like 25 years or so. But it wasn't until January of 2001 that I finally signed up and took the MSF course and got my motorcycle license. Three days after getting my license, I found (okay, okay, it was actually my brother who found it) an '83 Honda V45 Sabre. The graduate student selling was asking $600. Considering it started right up and appeared to work fine, I paid the guy and that was that. I felt pretty cool right away, because I had a Vanson jacket (purchased 3 days before I got my license) and the bike kind of looked like something from Mad Max.

I'd logged about 800 miles on the Sabre. Not even close to anything that would move me out of the newbie category. But between having a Ducati dealer 2 miles away and stumbling across www.mostro.org, I started feeling the need to at least consider what my next step would be. I dug the Monster the first time I saw it. (Two years ago, when I was signed up for the MSF - but didn't follow through due to laziness or some other malady - I thought a Monster would be cool, but without a license I sort of stopped thinking about motorcycles.) I checked the usual spots for used Monsters - eBay, Cycle Trader, Yahoo! Autos. I started checking finances, trying to figure out how long it'd be before I could step up and do the deed.

I signed up for the Monster mailing list. Just to see what other perspectives were on GP Motorcycles, I made my first post. A dude named Matt emailed back and said he'd had good luck there, and that he'd be willing to show me his Monster (don't even go there) the following Saturday. That Saturday, my brother and I cruised down (me on the POS Sabre, my brother on his '92 R100R), and met rottiguy at GP. After talking bikes for a while we were getting ready to shove off and I had one more question.

Me: "So, does that little fairing actually do anything for you?"
Matt: "Yeah, it works pretty good. Do you want to take my bike for a spin?"
Me: "No, no, I couldn't."
Matt: "Really, it's okay."
Me: "Uh - okay."

I climbed on and fired it up. Compared to my pig of a bike, the Monster feels almost like a bicycle. It sounded awesome, with Matt's full exhaust and carbon cans. I could've probably just sat there and been satisfied. I sure felt like I was going fast and I hadn't even put it in gear yet.

Matt: "I've done some mods so it's really torquey. Pull a wheelie."
Me: "I promise I'll pay for it if I break something."

Two seconds later...

Me: "Uh - I think I've stalled it trying to pull away from the curb."

At that point I really just wanted to crawl away and die (violent femmes, anyone?) but I put on my brave face and hit the starter again.

Matt: "It's got a really light clutch engagement feel."
Me: "AAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!" as I pulled away from the curb and suddenly found myself doing about 90 on the ramp from G Street to the 94 East.

Needless to say I was blown away. For comparison's sake, I followed that up with a quick spin on an '01 M750. Obviously not quite as fast, but nevertheless a lot of fun. What was NOT fun was getting back on the Sabre to go home. "Man," I said to myself - "I've got to do something about upgrading my bike."

I'd been trying to sell my C2 since Thanksgiving. A bunch of jokers had been calling and offering lowball prices in the hopes that I was desperate. A local San Diego guy came out of the blue April 3 and asked if I still had the car. I said I did and he said that was good since he didn't want to sell his current car unless mine was available. Six days later he dropped me off at home and I took the Honda down to the bank to deposit the difference between my loan and the purchase price. I emailed Matt that night and offered to buy his bike from him, which he, of course, declined :-)

There weren't any used Darks in Southern California, so on April 11, while working from home after a business trip had been cancelled, I decided to stop by GP on my lunch break and see if they had gotten any in. Sure enough, they had one there. Paul (the "P" in GP) came on like a drug dealer. "Go ahead, take it for a ride - you know you want to!" Three miles later and knew I was hooked. I told him "don't sell that thing for the next couple hours - I gotta make sure I can cover this" then went home to figure out if I could scrape the money together. I was so excited I almost forgot about a meeting I was supposed to attend via phone. I spent an agonizing 2 hours being very unproductive and worrying that, while I was on the phone, somebody else would come in and buy the bike since I had gone beyond the "next couple hours."

When I was finally done with work, I rushed down to GP shortly before they closed to find the bike still there. Paul smiled like the crack dealer he is and 15 minutes later I was riding the Monster home.

Tapped out financially, I'm sort of "stuck" with the stock bike for a while. Not that I'm complaining in any way. I'm pretty stoked to be able to have the bike, especially at this stage of my motorcycle riding. I would love to go to some track days, but probably would prefer to ride a school's bike the first time. Or two. Having left the track at big Willow (I dropped a wheel off on the drift out of Turn 2 and slingshotted back across the track, ending up somewhere down near Turn 1) I have no desire whatsoever to have a similar experience on two wheels. Maybe I'll overcome this fear eventually and enjoy tracking the bike as much as I enjoyed tracking the car.