Riftwave.net - Kevin's web log

Ducati held a test ride today at Atlanta Motor World, the Yamaha/Honda/Kawasaki/Ducati/Aprillia (yeah, that’s a lot of brands) dealership in Alpharetta, Georgia. I rode on over at around 9:00AM to sign myself up to test ride one of the 18 motorcycles they had brought out and to check out the open house at Atlanta Motor World.

At ~11:10AM I climbed onto Ducati’s fastest race bike, the 999 Testastretta…. a race-tuned V-twin with a 999 cc engine that puts out 143 hp and 112 N·m (82.6 ft·lbs) of torque that powers the 410 lbs machine. (For those of us not familiar with specs… its a wicked fast crotch rocket). I, and 18 other riders on Ducatis rode on a 20-mile loop with Ducati officials leading and watching over the ride. The particular bike that I rode was quite obviously a bike that has been on a racetrack or two (as evidenced by the wear on the rear tire and the presence of a steering damper). During the ride, I never got to put the bike through all its gears (to do so would probably have meant going speeds where you subsequently get put straight into either a jail cell or a cemetary plot), but I did get to lay on the throttle in a couple of places. Power everywhere… a deep throttle and a seemingly infinite well of torque. The 999 is quite easily the fastest vehicle (except for aircraft) that I have ever ridden.

Having just bought an R6, I am not really in the market for a new bike (much less one that costs ~$17,000.00).

Here is a photo of the bike that I rode right after I got off of it:

Today I got to flex my mighty linguistic skills at work. A fax came in from our French representatives with a question on a piece of equipment, and so I got to call their offices up to answer it. Armed with a phrase that I quickly looked up, I made the call. When the reception answered, smooth as silk I said “Je suis Kevin Wilson de (yes, I do rock).
Then, not five minutes later I was on the phone with the most excited and whiny chinese man I’ve ever met. Our Taiwan representative called to moan and gripe about wanted to get a deal on some prices. Ordinarily a mandarin phrase or two is enough to soothe the sensibilities, but this guy was having none of that. Probably the funniest phone call that I’ve ever taken (except for when our Austrailian rep calls… that guy sounds *exactly* like the crocodile hunter and its everything I can do to not laugh or imitate his accent on the phone

Back in February (around Valentine’s Day), I got a call from a photo acquisition service. They wanted to submit a 300 dpi version of a photo I took of Six Flags over Georgia (and had displayed on my web page) to their client for possible use in a middle school math textbook for Georgia. I sent them a copy of the original photo via e-mail and then heard back from them a few days later. Their client approved the photo and so they wanted to purchase the publishing rights from me! After doing some online searching and finding a guide for calculating freelance photography rates, we came to an arrangement. My check arrived a few days ago

Before any of this happened, a friend of mine once compared me to Peter Parker, the nerdy protagonist who has Spider-Man as his alter-ego. Well, I guess the description was more apt than either of us realized… in the comic/movie, Peter Parker works as a freelance photographer. Hmm… I wonder if that means i’ll be crawling on walls at some future time & place

The photo I took was from my trip there in August, 2004 with Tony, Sarah, and Suzie (Rest In Peace ). Here is a copy of the version in my photo gallery: