Shake The Diavel
by Phil.
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I may be as thick as a whale omelette, but even I have heard the rumblings about the new Ducati Diavel. Super performant, as is Ducati’s thing, but with the soul of a cruiser, and style bleeding all over the place; Ducati traditionalists are pissed, but folks like me are awfully curious. So, when pal Jimmy from Ace Motorsports suggested I might give the new beast a three-day test drive, I jumped. Might as well ;)
My current ride is a Triumph cruiser. Man, I love those British lines! I have never understood the attraction to those other tacky, exoskeletal racing constructs with their multicolored scaffolding and exhaust pipes proudly tipped up into my face like pairs of preening cat-butts.
Alone, photos of the Diavel did little to convince me, but… It turns out the Diavel is WAY sexier in person than any picture I’ve seen. Dunno why that is, but DAMN. And this thing turns heads: just two blocks out of the gate I had already attracted crazy smiling thumbs-ups from Harley riders and cops alike; two more blocks and I stopped for a taco (sue me, I was hungry) and before I could say “chimichanga” I was accosted by two teenagers demanding to know what on earth I was riding.
Over the next three days, the Diavel transformed my perceptions of what a bike could be, what riding could be, and why I really must go to Italy one day…
We all learn early on to “lean into the curve,” and I have always thought I was doing just that, but no – clearly I have not:
I’ve been sitting on top of the curve, leaning at it. Not my fault, it’s all my bike will allow.
On the Diavel, the bike wants you at the apex of that curve, right where the action happens, where science blinds the road. The windier, steeper, faster, the better, just lean the hell in, the more in you are, the more perfect it feels. Like Slim Pickens on the bomb in Dr. Strangelove. A revelation, really, and one that is hard to come back from: on my own bike now I am very aware that I am managing the situation to a large degree; the Diavel simply knows what to do.
I have never really known what the phrase “Eat My Dust” meant until riding the Diavel.
Imagine this: idling at a red light with a bunch of other vehicles; green light throttle GO, now look in your rear view and there is NOBODY THERE. If those poor bastards had blinked they would have thought you had simply disappeared.
That same game can be played from almost any starting speed: Already doing a hundred? Want to get away quick? Done and done.
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Some brief feature-geekery: The Ducati people have, wisely, included three riding modes, easily switchable on the fly: Urban, Touring, and Sport.
Urban will place some intelligent limits on various processes in the system, keeping power at a “modest” 100+HP. Touring and Sport modes are a low and high performance configuration of 162 HP, respectively.
Riding in Urban mode was sane and safe in town; Touring mode was a thrill ride for sure, and Sport mode could more precisely be called Weapon mode, and should likely be registered with the authorities as such. I tried Weapon mode for long enough to scare myself silly, and spent the rest of my time back in Touring mode (the middle one), which had more headroom than I could ever imagine needing; I never found the end of it.
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Pros
Pretty much everything. The Diavel perfectly suited my six-foot frame, and after only ten minutes it felt as if I’d been riding it all my life. The seat is comfortable and the posture is phenomenally back-friendly (another revelatory experience, to do a daylong ride and come home without an aching spine !). Need to at least mention here that the Ducati attention to fit and finish is way over the top. Down to details like the key fob, the gas cap, the footpegs, there seems to be nothing too small to get love and attention from Ducati design, engineering and production. At around 450 pounds, nimble and light but still substantial, the weight is pretty near perfect.
Cons
Pretty much nothing. However, I did find myself pushing the Diavel a bit harder each time I fired it up, just out of curiosity. The bike never broke a sweat, and I am pretty sure that the real world would eventually say WHOA before the bike ever would. A couple of riders I know, who clearly revere the Ducati line, told me flatly that they would not allow themselves to even get on one, Diavel or not, for that very reason. That issue is not enough to keep *me* off the bike, but I feel like I have to identify at least one con here :)
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Epilogue
Do you remember the story, “Flowers For Algernon“? In it, a man of challenged mental capacity by the name of Charly was given a radical new medical procedure that rapidly tripled his intelligence, moving him well past everyone around him. The pathos-packed punchline was that the procedure turned out to be only temporary: after experiencing such thrilling acceleration of intellect, he subsequently had to endure the concomitant dumbing down, sinking again, hour by hour, back to the doldrums where he began.
Like Charly, I had been given a gift of thrilling acceleration, and my gift, too, was cruelly short-lived: I returned the Diavel to Jimmy, and rode home on my once-beloved Triumph Speedhamster, sadly certain that my own ride was fat, ugly, and stoopid.
Still, there may be some comfort. Like Charly, once I finally move through this second phase, I should eventually reach a point where I forget what it was ever like to go so fast, to be so connected to the bike and the road, to be so much BETTER THAN YOU. I may be getting there, it’s hard to say; I sure hope so.
For now, though, I can still recall, all too clearly, leaving everyone to eat my dust, leaning into to the tip of the warhead, pointing it straight down, and going, going, GONE.
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We Are Leaving For Home Today
by Phil
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In 6 hours we leave for the airport. It’s been a long couple of weeks of tearful goodbyes, endless meals and gifted sweets, and truly suprising kindnesses. We are ready to go home, but we will miss all our friends and neighbors here. Last night we enjoyed our last nightride on the Enfields. The new owners of each will come this morning to take them to new homes :)
So we are headed to the airport… but we are not home yet! We have unfinished business with the beaurocratic stuff around transporting our Darjeeling street cur; it is not at all a given that she will make it home. The double-talk and mind-crushingly Byzantine procedures around international dog-shipping from here may defeat us, we do not know. The worst case is pretty damned grim.
We go from here to Delhi, where we will arrive tonight, and in the morning we leave by car for Agra and the Taj Mahal. Rumor has it there is a retirement village for dancing bears out that way, so we may have to stop…
Sunday we come back from the Taj, and in the wee hours of Monday morning, we board Emirates are for the first leg of the flight home, stopping over in Dubai. But still we are delayed: due to the dog (if she makes it that far), we must lay over for longer than 6 hours, per Emirates rules; and there is only one flight a day, so that really means 24 hours. So we board Emirates again for the final leg on Tuesday morning, to arrive in San Francisco sometime on Tuesday.
Gonna stop at Pancho’s on Polk Street and Kiji on Guererro immediately. After that we are turning on the invisibility cloak for a couple of weeks.
See you soon :)
It’s The Final Countdown
by Phil
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At this moment we have only 9 days to go.
Yeah, it’s bittersweet. Cliché, but true. We are seriously going to miss India; at the same time, we will be happy to come back to the States.
There were so many more essays and photos we wanted to post here… every day brought innumerable new stories, images, what-the-fuck moments and revelations… Proustian nano-moments :) Well, we did what we could – a kind of brute force triage – posting what time would allow, and what would not be stifled :)
Given that coming home is also a part of this adventure, what with adjustments and re-entry issues, I think we are going to keep this blog going for some time, and continue to backfill photos and write new essays chronicling our return home and experiences settling in.
So please do keep coming back, as the journey will not be over for a long time yet !
Dr. Ambedkar
by Phil
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This is Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, a major hero to the underclasses here. His figure can be seen anywhere the Dalit classes congragate: portraits, statues, signs, poojas, parks and plaques. He was the first of the Dalit castes to obtain higher education, earning law degrees and multiple doctorates from Columbia University and the London School of Economics. By the time he died in 1956, he had spent a lifetime fighting against the caste system here, evangelizing Hindus to move to Buddhism, and architecting the very first Indian constitution.
This particular representation of Dr. Ambedkar has been painted on a wall along Bannerghatta Road, a main artery through the city here in Bangalore. Every time we pass by, I have been struck by the unusually articulate style, the gorgeous blue, and the fact that the style for some reason kind of reminds me of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine…!
Click on the image to step back and view from a distance.
Pam, On The Road.
by Pam
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I pull around the corner and launch myself into traffic, barely looking to see what I already know is coming at me: a bus, three tuk-tuks, a scooter carrying a family of four, and another scooter with a giant bundle of laundry that the driver is reaching over to steer.
It’s usually best to just focus on the spaces inbetween these things up ahead, and trust that the people behind are doing the same.
In front of me is a blue and white city bus, full to sardine capacity. Without warning, a yellow and black tuk-tuk slips inbetween the bus and me; I swerve, push ahead, and slide back in front of him. A half-block open stretch is pure freedom, with the warm wind and showers of leaves falling from the overhanging trees.
The traffic stops, and I dive into the two-foot wide space between the bus and the cars. I have to tip the bike to the left to avoid the metal rebar that is hanging off the back of an oxcart. A young boy sits on the other end of the pile of metal, piloting two grey beasts whose horns are painted blue and capped with little bronze cones. A stream of scooters and motorcycles crowds in behind me, and we all wait, breathing the billowing exhaust while waiting for the light to turn green.
When we first arrived in Bangalore, and suffered through our first cross-town drive in the back of a taxi, our brains nearly exploded. After twenty minutes, I laid my head on Phil’s lap so I wouldn’t have to watch.
Indian roads, and Bangalore roads in particular, are like a life-and-death video game: anyone, or anything, can come at you from any direction, at any time, for any reason – car, bus, motorcycle, camel, scooter, ox-cart, bicycle, cow, goat, old women, young men, pony carts, monkeys. You must be ready to steer or swerve around them, accelerate, or slam on your brakes at any second. At night it just gets worse because a quarter of the people drive without their lights on, and the other three-quarters drive with their brights on, ensuring that everyone is periodically blinded.
The other hazards (apart from the traffic, the animals, and the people) are the roads themselves. Some sections are smooth and paved, while others are dirt and gravel; most have large random holes where unmarked roadwork is, or was, or might be, taking place. Piles of sand and bricks from construction projects spill out and cover parts of the roadway throughout Bangalore. There are frequent, randomly placed, speed bumps.
We hadn’t planned on learning how to ride motorcycles in India, but Phil fell in love with the Enfields, and I fell out of love with having to depend on a driver. Phil learned to drive the Machismo with me on the back, between 10 p.m. and midnight – the hours between when most Indians go to sleep and when the dogs claim the streets.
We rode through the outskirts, through villages quickly being absorbed by the city, on roads that disappeared into dirt track, while being chased by ragtag packs of feral dogs.
The bike was old, unreliable, and difficult to start. It abandoned us over and over, leaving us in sleepy alleys, surrounded by dogs, and on deserted country roads, surrounded by dogs. We would walk towards civilization with sticks and handfuls of rocks for protection, hopping up and down and shouting when a tuk-tuk rolled by. Then we’d attempt to explain to the driver, with no common language, how to get to our house, while having no idea where we even were.
One Sunday afternoon drive turned into an epic two-day adventure, when the bike’s engine exploded oil all over the highway. We were welcomed into a tiny village by a committee of about 30 children who gave us a house-to-house tour while the mechanic repaired the bike well enough to get us to the next village. In that village we found another Enfield mechanic who finished off the repair. By then it was late, so we found a hotel, spent the night, and the next day we had the most stunningly gorgeous drive back to Bangalore, on a road we would have never found without our mishap.
These breakdowns and mishaps were as entertaining as anything we had set out to do purposefully. Landing in random places has shown us more of India than we would ever have seen otherwise, and the hospitality we were greeted with over and over again made both of us feel quite comfortable launching ourselves into unknown territory, with unreliable transportation.
One afternoon, we took the old Bull to a local mechanic to repair a small oil leak. When Phil went to pick it up after work, the bike was in a thousand little pieces, and, according to the mechanic, who by now we were certain was crooked, absolutely everything was wrong with it. One week and a couple of hundred U.S. dollars later, Phil retrieved the bike, and that very night it died on us once again, next to a field of blue tarp tents and camels, and the requisite pack of wild dogs.
By now the thrill of the unknown was getting in the way of Phil getting to work, and we decided to stop pushing our luck: our plan was to sell the old Machismo, and drop the cash for a brand new Thunderbird for our final six months in India, and then sell that before we headed back home. But before we could sell the first one, our regular mechanic insisted on having one more go: he rebuilt the engine, top to bottom, cursing the previous mechanic under his breath the whole time.
This time, the old Machismo started easily, and ran like a dream.
In the meantime, I learned to ride the new bike. A shiny red Enfield Thunderbird Twin Spark. For days I just looked at it, terrified to try. It looked bad-ass and menacing, with these low-slung curves and more metal that I was sure I could be in charge of. But I knew that if I could learn to drive it, I would have freedom. The kind of freedom that isn’t available when people have made it their duty to take care of you. By this point I was sick to death of being the expat white lady in the back of a car with tinted windows, and my relationship with our driver, Mustaq, had become strained. I dreaded even having to go grocery shopping, or to go anywhere the required a car to get me there.
Phil gave me a nudge and a few lessons on a quiet street.
I took to it easily. Surprisingly easily, as if I’d been riding my whole life. It felt like a cross between a bicycle and the unruly horse I used to ride when I was a teen. It was thrilling. Bangalore was my oyster. Mustaq would no longer be my babysitter. I was free. I was cocky. I crashed. It hurt. I got back on and rode to the hospital. I lay on the couch for a week, and have a nasty scar on my arm.
Carefully and humbly, I began riding again. I followed Phil and learned how to cross a mobbed intersection by tucking in next to something bigger than me, then moving when they moved. I learned to wend my way to the very front of the mob at any red light, then blast out ahead of the traffic before anyone else. I began to see the patterns within the chaos. There were rhythms and agreements. I learned to stare down and honk, and stop quickly, to push forward like I’m trying to get to the stage. I learned to expect that someone is going to be turning right from the far left hand lane, and to not freak out when they did.
Indians, in one sense, are excellent drivers: they aren’t considerate drivers, or safe drivers, but they do seem to be pretty good at not hitting each other. The most amazing thing about India traffic is that no-one gets angry when drivers make bonehead moves. But heaven forbid you actually hurt someone: a few months back a bus driver hit a child on a congested road in Bangalore. Justice was violent and swift:
A mob beat the crap out of the driver and set the bus on fire.
About once a week Phil or I get pulled over by men in uniforms who may, or may not, be traffic police. Two or three of them set up shop on a street and flag drivers down with a stick. Once pulled over, they issue a fine that is based, in our case, on the color of our skin.
“No turn. One thousand rupees, Madam.”
“For what?” I ask. “What did I do?”
“No free turn. Six hundred rupees, Madam.”
“You mean there are actually rules ?” I say, pretty sure I’m talking too fast for him to understand.
“Five hundred rupees, Madam.”
“Are you even a real police officer ?” I chide, leaning over to see if he has two stars on his shoulders.
“Three hundred rupees, Madam, you must pay.”
“You take me to the police station and I’ll pay there,” I say, and smile with a snappy head tilt.
He waves me on with his stick.
Most of the license plates in our area of Bangalore begin with “KAO5.” The “5″ looks like an “S,” making it “KAOS”, which is simply stating the obvious. I should hate all this chaos. I should be terrified, but I’m not. I adore the lawlessness of it. Sliding though the crazy streets, I feel like my childhood hero Evel Knievel. People do stare, even more so than usual: Indian women rarely ride motorcycles, and my white skin is a double shocker. But on the bike I move fast enough and am concentrating hard enough to barely notice.
With us both riding, more and more of our weekends are spent on sojourns outside the city, rolling though idyllic scenery, through small villages, seeing animals and birds, and beautiful lush farmland. The countryside, where 80% of the people live, is where India shines. The insane confusion of the city gives way to an ancient way of life that, aside from the introduction of televisions and cell phones, hasn’t changed in hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The perfumed air is sweet with the mysterious smells of wood and earth, animals and blossoms.
Every trip we make on the bikes that ends after dark is finished off nicely with the double dog dare:
There are two particular wild dogs that lurk at the approach to our street; they know our bikes, and they hear us coming. By the time we get to their hiding place they are in position: they lay in wait until we get close, and then give mad chase, barking ferociously while taking bites out of the air, near our legs.
We laugh and scream like seven-year-olds, and then take another lap just for fun.
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[ Thanks to Aman Sagar for the photograph, and to Ranganath Krishnamani for the Kannada script - which, by the way, means: "Awesome bike; awesome girl." ~ Ed. ]
River Morning
by Phil
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I don’t know if this photo really does the job, but the morning light at this part of the Cauvery River in Dubare, Coorg, was astounding. Click the photo for a larger view.
