The Ducati didn't make it
The city of Fort Collins mailed the ticket to my husband’s ex-wife, who does not live in Fort Collins, nor does she ride a Ducati. She was furious. To this day, none of us understands how that happened. But who cares? It was fantastic and she’s still pissed. I call that a win.
A motorcycle, a forest fire, and the strange, unrelenting reality of starting over
I keep thinking about this motorcycle I had. A Ducati Monster. Total screamer. A “hooligan bike,” my husband called it.
It was a naked bike with 650cc of power and a growly engine, the perfect townie ride. The dry clutch had a sound so distinctive it was practically an Italian accent.
I got into some trouble on that thing. Eventually, it met an unfortunate and untimely end.
It wasn’t exactly built for distance, so I didn’t take it far. I rode it around wherever I happened to be living at the time—Denver, then Laguna Beach, then Fort Collins, back when I was still drifting between places.
The crowning achievement on that bike came as quite a surprise. I got a radar ticket for speeding (not a surprise) on a side road in Fort Collins, heading west just past the Daz Bog coffee shop. For clarity, I was moving at a healthy clip, but not Isle of Man territory or anything.
Still, fast enough to trigger the camera. And then, somehow, the city of Fort Collins mailed the ticket to my husband’s ex-wife, who does not live in Fort Collins, nor does she ride a Ducati. She was furious (also, not a surprise). To this day, none of us understands how that happened. But who cares? It was fantastic and she’s still pissed. I call that a win.
Not long after that, the bike was gone. Our house burned down in the High Park Fire in 2011. Everything went with it. Poof. Photos, notebooks, the material accumulation of a life. The Ducati was just one thing in the pile of rubble, but it’s the one I think about the most.
After the loss of the house and all the torched things, forward motion wasn’t a speed thing anymore. In its place was the very inelegant reality of starting over.
Shit happens and sometimes you have to rebuild. You can’t sit in the ashes and cry all day. You have to dust it off and move forward, make some decisions. You fall. You fail. You get up. You rebuild.
There’s a before version and there’s an after version. The in between version is where the work gets done.
Comments ()