#SonOfTheSausageCreature

I don’t need it, but I want it... This bike doesn’t fit me, but it sure does suit me. Black, exotic, and monstrously overpowered. It sounds and smells like World War Two, and it will kill you just as quick. Rolling thunder and unburnt gasoline. I’m falling in love with it.

Hunter S. Thompson would have loved it too. I’d heard him on the radio last night, translated into German. Listening to the over-umlauted ugliness spew-forth from my speaker, I’d thought there were some things those people had done, for which they should never be forgiven.

Our great white Hunter fell prey to black depression, to many large guns, and a single small bullet. His flesh is dead, but his spirit lives-on; in all those who shudder in a blur-of-terror, as the horizon, once yonder, jumps at you, like a man-eating tiger. The throttle on these bars is something close to supernatural. Your eyes tell you it’s analogue; actuated by a cable, but in-the-hand it feels digital: a one-or-zero choice, between walking and disabled. With a tilt of your wrist, that which was ‘small and far away’ is now very big, and very real, very very quickly. It terrifies you and then it intoxicates you. Do it just once and you’ll think yourself insane, and then you’ll itch, and you will yearn, to do it all again.

Here I sit in Chelsea, stuck in traffic once again. On the sidewalk stroll weirdos, vegetarians, and spotty eco-heroes. Look at their faces, they know it all, save all the good stuff. Their palettes too mild for the searing spice of life, or a juicy bit of rough. Men in white ankle-socks sport clown-town trousers, with hems at half-mast. Not a single smile amongst them, nor a fleeting flicker of fun. I watch them watch-themselves, in the reflection of darkened windows. They all pay attention, to precisely no-one else. Sat atop this sports-bike, at zero miles an hour, I offer myself assurance that despite being stationary, I’ll never be pedestrian.

Green light. BANG! …Power indistinguishable from blood-lust and savagery. No traffic. No waiting. No second chances. Gone. And not gone as in: still visible in the distance, but a new and much faster form of gone, a gone that spins-on-its-heels and wonders-out-loud: “…who was it, that occupied this space in our crowd?”

Crouched atop the tank, this thing makes my back hurt and my heart sing. Astride the beast, you’ll hit ninety-seven miles-per-hour, whilst still in third gear – but don’t ask me how I know. Instead, know only that after third, there are three more gears to go. This machine lives to kill you, with a smile-on-its-face, and a spring-in-its-step. Dangerously beautiful. Seductive. And lethal. It’s the one more drink, for the road son. It’s the bisexual ex-girlfriend that begs you for a threesome. It’s a question that’s proffered – but will you accept the consequences, of all that’s been offered?

This is a Ducati, the Scrambler Sport-Pro; a kinky two-wheel temptress, with her pipes on show. Fourteen-thousand pounds for eleven-hundred CCs.  Is this, dear friends… a price worth paying ?

- Pal Blanko