And so, the story comes to a close... for now.

Shit, man, it's been a crazy 24hrs! This time yesterday I was going through all emotions, mostly the bad ones, but today, a complete 180° turn!!

Before I update y'all to the situation, if you haven't read the my threads below, please do so now starting with Resignation #1





























Now for the update. Chronic was supposed to drop off my bike this morning at 10:30 so that I can then drop it off to DucSoho asap. I'm outside the crib this morning and 10:30 rolls by, no truck. Take the pup out for his morning constitutional, get home at 11am. Still no truck. By 11:30 I'm getting antsy. I give'em a call at 11:45 to find out what's going on and what time they'll be here.

They tell me that the driver is leaving within the hour and that I should expect them sometime around 2pm. Great, to me that meant 3 or 4 meaning the bike wouldn't be in Irish Mike's hands until late afternoon which is fucked up cause he's leaving next Friday and he needs as much time with the bike he can get so the scrubs won't have to work on it. I'm further irritated by the fact that I now owe Chronic $200 for the towing back and forth and for the diagnosis, no reflection on them of course. So I say fine, see you then and was about to hang up when...

... the receptionist tells me Dave (the owner) wants to speak to me. Dave gets on the phone...

... REALLY REALLY long story short, thanks to him, we came up with an ideal solution to my problems. Are you ready for this? Are you? Well then get this, we're TRADING bikes. He's gonna get my broken 695 as is plus $1500. The bike won't go back to DucSoho and I won't have to deal with the warranty issues. Nor will I have to shell out $1200 for the 15k service. What am I getting in return? Well since you asked, it's a 2004 749S with only 280 track miles on it. Yes, 280. Clear title, on liens, no bullshit. Sounds too good to be true right? Well that's what I thought but after we spoke about, I felt more than comfortable sealing the deal. He got the bike as a Ducati employee (deep discount), and it meant to used as a track bike. Since opening his own place of business, he hasn't had the time to do anytrack days so the bike just sat for 2 years. Before I take delivery he'll give it thorough once over and replace whatever needs to be replaced (fluids, belts, plugs, etc).

I know what you're thinking... I'm jumping out of the frying pan and into the inferno. Why go from a troublesome Duc to an even higher more costly to maintain Duc (it's a 4 valve testastretta engine)? 3 reasons. For one, it's virtually new and I can sell it for a hell of a lot more than I could've sold my Monster for, and 2, for the price of what I was going to pay for the 15k service, I'll be on a new baby superbike! And I won't have to deal with the major headache of DucSoho and a warranty issue. And for 3rd'ly, I'll be back on a bike NEXT WEEK and opposed to months and months from now!!

This deal may sound shady to you folks I know, but believe me when I tell you, it's for the good. As it turns out through speaking and emailing Dave, we know a lot of the same people and he's not gonna mess around cause he knows that his business's reputation is at stake. To mention nothing of all the hype I'm gonna give the shop by word of mouth and on the internet for doing this for me. That type of hype goes a long way!

As to whether I'll keep the bike or not, well that remains to be seen. I'll tell you right now that in DO NOT want to keep it unless I also get a beater. I'll have to admit though, it'll be hard not to fall in love with it. With 110.00 HP (80.3 kW)) @ 10500 RPM and 78.00 Nm (8.0 kgf-m or 57.5 ft.lbs) @ 8500 RPM to play with, it'll be hard not to get into it. Shit, that's over a 35hp jump than what I'm on now.

So that's the story. Crazy huh? I still can't believe it myself. What strikes a huge chord with me though is the motorcycle community. Like I said previously, tons of folks shouted out to me showing support and love and big part of reason this deal happened was because of that said community. There are lots on good well meaning folks out there.
I'll be taking delivery of the new scoot either Monday or Tuesday. Either way, WS (who knows all this by now) and I will be going on a grilled cheese run on Tuesday nite so's I can see what the new sled has got under the hood. So if y'all can make it out, I'd love to introduce you to the new girl.

Here's my bike. Picture was taken this afternoon. The top picture is what the bike looks like in a decent shot, the bottom one is my bike