Blog Prologue - Why?

Hi. I'm Rob. I like motorcycles. I like them more than puppies and kittens and sushi and the Arrhenius equation and Disneyland and pretty much everything except family and friends... none of which we'll get into here.

I have a particular bike, a 2006 Ducati ST3s, who's life needs chronicling. The reason is simple, there's a dearth of information about the maintenance and upkeep of this particular machine. Yep, that's all there is to this blog. Pretty dry stuff, huh? Unless you like motorcycles and like them in a particular way.

I've owned quite a few motorcycles in my life... from standards to cruisers to supersports to dirtbikes and hooligan bikes. From 1999 to 2008, I averaged 1 new bike purchase per year. Some years none, some years 3. This ST3 is the only one of the lot that I was extremely happy with. So it became branded as a keeper and I have kept it longer than any other motorcycle I've owned in my grown up life. She even has a name, Gabriella. I name all my street bikes, by the way, because it's easier to say "Gab needs a bath" than "The ST3s needs to be washed".

There's another thing I like... futzing around in the garage on mechanical things. The way this ties into Gab is the fact the Ducati's are perceived to be maintenance intensive. The more accurate depiction is that Ducati maintenance can be costly if you have to pay someone to do it. This was a big consideration when I bought her in '07, could I afford to keep her? It took me about 10 minutes to figure that one out. I figured I would do as much maintenance as I could figure out and time would not be a consideration.

A lot of the 'figuring out' comes from printed material and internet resources. Books, message boards, owners groups and email exchanges with other owners come in handy and get me half way there. The rest is just doing it. So I'm going to put it down in electronic form so I can refer to it and the fact that others can too is just gravy. Unless you don't like gravy. I like gravy, well, I like to make gravy but like I said earlier, that's not the point here because good gravy requires good stock and I've been known to spend a whole day making stock just to divvy up the result in 2 cup portions I freeze just for gravy making. Which reminds me... I need soup bones.