the return of Dunkin Duck - Ducati.ms

JimC · Apr 21st, 2011, 5:13 pm

Some of you may know about Dunkin Duck from this thread. But thats really not where the name came from. Back in 2004 I purchased my first Ducati, a beautiful yellow 800ss, and at that time I was leading alot of rides on the NER site, and because I always had a Dunkin Donuts stop in them I was giving the nickname of Dunkin Duck.

Here she is the day I took her home in October of 04

I kept that Ducati for 4 years, then in the spring of 2008 I was seduced by the beauty, speed and allure of the Ducati Multistrada. In a moment of confused passion I traded away my trusty yellow bike for the taller red one.

This was something that didnt go over well with Mrs OSJ. Because the SS was my first Ducati, and she loved cool looking sport bikes she felt it was a huge mistake getting rid of it. After a short time I felt the same way. However I did love my Multi, and it took me all over New England, and the eastern State for three years and 30,000 miles. I loved that Multi, and Mrs OSJ warmed up to her pretty fast.

But... theres always a but in these stories isn't there?

I would catch Mrs OSJ on Sunday mornings scanning ebay, or craigslist...always looking for the same thing, a mid 2000's SS. Preferably a yellow one. She would always point out that you never see one for sale, and if so it was always red. We always attend a few Italian motorcycle shows each year and would notice the same thing.

Until last fall, at the IOM show in September Mrs OSJ spots a yellow SS, she says hey, one like we use to own...I quickly said, that IS our old bike! She couldn't believe it, and she was determinded to talk with the owner, so we kept an eye on the bike unitil we noticed a tall guy that was standing near it...turns out it was the owner.

So we spend a few minutes talking with him, and much to my surprise Mrs. OSJ says, if you ever wanna sell it call me first! She gets his email before we leave and much to my surprise they communicate a few times during the winter. I had no idea about this.

At one point this winter she asks me if I wouldn't mind her buying it back, I said sure..but I dont want to own 2 expensive to maintain Ducati's. So she says, why dont you try and sell the Multi. Oh boy..now things are getting interesting for sure!

The multi had to go in for some recall work, its 30k mile service and new tires. I figured it would be worth its most with this stuff getting done. I was to get it back by mid March and I would try to sell it then.

But....yup...TWO buts in this story....

Peter, the guy that owned my old SS called me up and asked if I would have some interest in doing a trade? Seems he had a hankering for a Multistrada and knew I needed to sell mine before I could buy the SS.
So we meet up for breakfast one Sunday Morning with the two bikes.

and come to an agreement!

Swap bikes plus some cash in my pocket and we are both happy.

Mrs OSJ was happy!!
After breakfast we take the multi for one last ride to the bean, Michelle says her goodbye and cant wait for the yellow bike to return.

Now this whole plan takes almost 2months from the first talk to the swap, which BTW happens on Mrs OSJ's birthday. And to make it even more fun I decided not to tell anyone. I wanted to surprise my riding buddies. I did let it slip out to the Lunni one in Maine, but I knew I could trust him to keep it quiet. All others had no idea.

JimC · Apr 21st, 2011, 5:15 pm

Here is the Multi all tied down and ready to go to its new owner.

Dunkin Duck even comes along for the ride.

I meet up with Peter in Putnan CT for the swap. DD gets to meet Peter and see's the original Dunkin Duck for the first time. We talk bikes for a while, Peter owns several cool bikes, RC51, SuperHawk, Road King and a 750ss.

Once both bikes are loaded with their new owners we head home.

Now some of you might remember from earlier trip reports that I have owned some bikes more than once, like two RZ 350's, two KLR650's, two FZ600's, two VRF's and three Concours. But never did I buy back the same bike I had once owned, this was a first for even me! And this bike makes it 23 bikes I've owned since I started riding back in 1984. And to make the story even sweeter is I traded in the SS for the Multi back in 07, only to trade the Multi back for the SS in 2011!

Here is the last time these two bikes saw each other...

and here they are 4 years later

So the yellow duck is back!

Now gotta go for a ride.....

That trip report will be posted shortly...stay tuned!!!

Bill_Anderson · Apr 21st, 2011, 11:45 pm

Let's hope the return of DD also marks the return of your ride videos and photo narratives.

JimC · Apr 22nd, 2011, 6:33 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bill_Anderson

Let's hope the return of DD also marks the return of your ride videos and photo narratives.

thanks Bill

That link at the very start of this thread takes you too my blog, I try and put everything there, but I will also do my best to paste them over here for you!

Oh, and Mrs OSJ got me a gopro camera for christmas, looking forward to getting that mounted on the bikes this year!

va duc · Apr 22nd, 2011, 7:11 am

Wow, I will be following this, great write up and pictures. I am now a DD fan!

JimC · May 17th, 2011, 7:47 pm

okay, if you read my earlier trip report you already know about the "new" bike we have. One couple I wanted to surprise about this bike was our good friends the Burbs...aka Chris and Helen

I met Chris a few years ago on the Multi.net message board. At that time both of us had nice red Multistrada's

Back in the spring of 09 Tim did a RTE in Mid State Maine and we invited Chris and Helen to join us on the ride up and stay over night in Rockland. We really hit it off and have become very close friends ever since.

Chris lost his love for the red Ducati shortly after that season and switched over to a black beauty of a Concours. We have done many day rides together, as well as over night trips, we even did a 7 day trip with them last season. Our first ride we did together was meeting up at the Vanilla Bean in CT for lunch before a nice afternoon ride. This turned out to be our "first" official ride of each new season. Sometimes Chris and I have done hookey rides together, but this is usually the first for the four of us.

So this year things worked out perfectly. The yellow duck was home, and with our two little ones on a cruise for school vacation week we had some time to ride. We made plans to meet at the Bean Saturday afternoon, then we would take a nice ride thru CT on some the the BONE roads, ending it Essex for the night at "The Griz"

JimC · May 17th, 2011, 7:49 pm

Little did Chris know what bike we would be taking. He knew I was trying to sell the multi, but he had no idea what had happened. We wanted to arrive a little late so we would get to see their faces when we pulled up at the bean. However the forecast for the day was for cloudy and cool conditions with heavy rain coming in for the evening. When Michelle and I arrived at the bean they were inside, but Helen did come running out to see the new wheels.

For some reason I didn't take any photos while at the bean, but we did enjoy a great lunch and got to tell our good friends our little secret and the whole story that went along with it!

The sun was certainly hiding from us and it looked pretty gloomy. This didn't dampen our spirits. We saddled up on our rides and began our trip south.
I had made reservations at a small in called the "The Griswold Inn" in Essex. If you ever been to Essex you know its the perfect little New England village full of shops and restaurants. All within walking distance of our hotel. This is something we like to do when staying over night. We get alot of enjoyment out of going for after dinner walks thru little downtown areas like this.

However before we got to Essex we wanted to do some riding. And using the New England Riders "best of" website I put together some roads to ride. All of these roads Ive been on in the past but it was fun using that great resource to put the route together.

We took CT 97 south to Baltic where we grabbed CT 207 west. This road has some great sweepers that really let you push the speeds. Not the best thing for your points on your license if you get caught, however we didn't see any of CT finest LEO's on this ride. 207 lead us to Rt16 south and into Colchester. That little section of 16 north of Colchester has some fast sweepers in it as well. Road conditions were great on these numbered highways and traffic was very light.

If we hadn't just had lunch at the Bean I would have stopped for burgers at Harry's Place, man they have good burgers there! But our bellies were full so we kept on riding. I took the Burbs down Lake Shore rd to one great little road they had never been on. Hopyard Rd which goes right thru Devils Hopyard State Park. This road is short, but SWEET! There are some dips that will take your breath away if you are going just a little over the posted speed limit. Its one of those roads you should run a few times before you go too fast on it.

We stopped for a few photo's in the parking lot by Chapman Falls, which are really cool and I suggest you stop by and check them out

If we look cold, its because we were! It felt more like a late November afternoon than a Mid April one. We didn't hang out here too long, we knew rain was coming and we wanted to get to the hotel early enough to change and have dinner. We did however take the first photo of the two bikes together

As you can see I have my Ortlieb bag strapped to the back rest of the Corbin seat. Michelle and I did realize pretty quickly how much we missed the luggage capabilities of the Multistrada. A Venture Rack system is on order right now, so the next trip we should be a little better off.

Once thru the Hopyard, which was fun (the road has some sand on it left over from the winter or maybe a heavy rain storm) We found ourselves on another gem of a CT road. Mt Archer/Brush Hill Road is short but oh so nice! But it they must have a Friday trash day on this road, and a whole bunch of people forgot to take their barrels in. And because it was so windy there were trash barrels rolling all over the road. It was crazy.

We wanted to take the Hadlyme/Chester Ferry across the CT river, but it was closed so we went north to use the Godspeed bridge instead. A quick run south along the river on CT154 brought us to Essex and our resting spot for the nite.

"The Griz" as the locals put it was a nice place to stay. Not quite motorcycle friendly, we asked about covered parking because of the heavy rains that were forecast for the night. The first spot we were told to park got axed when one of the owners drove by and saw us moving the bikes there.

I waited until he left and moved the bikes up on the side walk right under the windows to our rooms.

After we showered and put on our street clothes we took a nice walk around town then came back to the Griz for a very relaxing dinner. Food was good, not great, a little on the expensive side but we were with good friends and it wasn't hard to have a great time.

After dinner we went next door to a small house the Inn owns. Its there you will find the only TV on the property. We sat in that little building until the Habs scored three goals then Chris had enough and we all went back to our rooms. By this time the rain was falling hard.

The one big disappointment of the weekend was the quality of the beds at this hotel. Which isn't a cheap one. It by far was one of the most uncomfortable beds Ive ever slept on. Plus the thunder and lighting was pretty intense.
However we did wake up to the sun shining and the start of a beautiful day. I peeked in on the Burbs as I walked by to get my coffee

Miss Helen was up and ready to go!

JimC · May 17th, 2011, 7:50 pm

We took another walk around town before we started our day

The Burbs

Before we left town we got one more photo of the bikes together

Before we left I check the CT DOT website to see if the Ferry was running, and it said it will open at 10am. We said goodbye to the Griz and headed north to the ferry only to find this "ferry closed due to high water"

Oh so close....

JimC · May 17th, 2011, 7:52 pm

The Godspeed bridge was used again to cross the mighty river. We uses CT 82 to travel east for a bit. Then crossed over the Thames river using I95. Our first stop of the morning was for our first Harley stamp of the new year.

Mikes Famous is a nice Harley dealership in Mystic CT. The guy you see walking toward me in the photo above owns a Ducati Paso, and is always the first to come greet me when I pull up on my Ducati. This will be the 4th year I am trying to win a brand new motorcycle in the www.ridenewengland.com program.

Many of our trip reports have one of these stops in them. This would be the only one for this trip. From here we headed north to CT 201 then Wyassup Rd. Frost heaves are present still on this road, I would recommend holding off for a few more weeks before you ride hard on that road.
CT 49 took us further north.

Which is one of the "best of" roads on the list. There are some twisty sections but also some very scenic sections to this road. The condition was good and we really enjoyed this part of the ride.

Around noon we said goodbye to CT and entered RI on Rt 14. Which we took to some back roads and finally to RI 12. This road goes south of the Scituiate Reservoir. At one point I had to do a u turn to get this photo

Which is the back side of this rock..

I had tagging on my mind! I knew I would be in the area of the current RI tag so I thought this would be a good replacement for it. At this point I asked everyone if they were ready for lunch. Seeing it was almost 2pm they all said yes. I had saved a couple triple D locations in my GPS and one of them was near. So off we went...to get some of these..

Those are some mighty fine hotdogs....er...weiners. Which you can go get your own by visiting this place...

Boy did I that lunch! They have 3 locations in RI and I highly recommend you visit them.

Because our kids were gone for the week, for the first time we didn't have to be home at any certain time. I let Chris take over the lead for the afternoon and he took us on a little tour in his backyard.

We stopped for a few photo's along the way

JimC · May 17th, 2011, 7:53 pm

Future tags some day?

Chris led us back to there condo complex, where we all relaxed on the couch for a few hrs and watched the Assen round of world superbike race.

After one more meal together we said our goodbyes and headed home. We had a quick hour highway ride home before it got too dark.

Pulling into my office I snapped the final shot of the weekend.

then parked our yellow duck in the garage. I stroked her tank as I walked past and quietly said thank you for coming back to us. This time I promise I will never let you go. The air cooled engine pinged just as I shut the door, almost her way of saying....your forgiven...

It will be a great ride!