Letters from Italy (Ride journal images, & origin stories of Ducati)

Thanks btw.
HA! Ya, I was going to say something about the law of conservation of energy & taxes. Seems there's a discussion now about the old "Nothing comes from Nothing" in the physics world. Seems, "nothing is unstable" and can produce something in quantum theory.
Taxes though remain a bitch. I've got an ex-pat-newby-in-country deal for a few years that's pretty dang good for the moment. The locals pay out the nose for their robust civic services.

craig bush said:

Wow! Amazing experience and very well-written account. You have some skill.

Nice selfie with Claudio too.

One thought - nothing is free. Literally. Even Italian ambulances.

Click to expand...

Gratitude
So I go for a ride with some new guys, most of whom I just met. The riding was amazing. After hitting Raticosa Pass, we continue down into a Valley in Emilia Romagnia to a lunch spot near a tiny village. We go winding through the mountains in the most absurd May Tuscan paradise I've ever seen, trees dripping with flowers, scarlet poppies lining the roads, fields of wheat swaying in the breeze. We pick our way through the village streets and out the other side to park on a cliff with an overlook. I order nachos with jalapeños. Wow, they have nachos! That's a first. Mexican food is definitely obscure in Italy, though making brave appearances in big cities as exotic, even expensive restaurants. Here, nachos, €3.50.
My new Ducati Club friends gather looking out from under our tree across a spectacular grassy meadow filled with cherry trees in a valley with dramatic boulders outcroppings.
We start talking. These people wear their hearts on their sleves I tell you. They tend to say whatever is on their minds with politeness but little social-climbing filter.
One guy who's got a new Panigale V4 was all of 5'4" is a doctor. He hadn't seen the sun for 2 years because of covid. His phone rings 24/7 dealing with mostly panic these days. He said, fuckit and bought a new Panigale so he can just escape, get some air. He road the pants off it I have to say. A very decent rider. All of them are. One thing that's blowing me away is the median level of riding talent here is a few notches up from what I'm used to in California which puts me a few notches lower than where I was used to sitting on the 'bitchen fast guys chart.'
This other guy, kind of a huge build, 6'3" lots of kilos, just bought a Hypermotard. He sits and announces "I brought lunch, you guys order. My budget is €6 today. Poverty." He also just bought a house next to his mom and brother, so poverty but, actually a chosen path. He's got more than one Ducati. He gets out once a week to blast around on his bike. Super nice guy, huge smile on his face all the time. Always has one of those engulfing handshakes and remembers everything about you. One day a week he lets his mom and brother to fend for themselves so he can get some sanity out in the wild wind. His mom is about 106 years old and needs some pretty full time care. He quit his career as an engineer, so he could take care of her, as she could no longer take care of his brother, who is crippled and also needs full time care. His normal day 6 days a week is serving his family's every physical need. He got a job driving trucks delivering organic food graveyard shift so he can spend the day with them. After our rides he goes home to sleep a few hours and then starts work at 7PM, gets home at 6 AM and starts taking care of his family. He's happy and he is able to take care of the people most important to him.
Damn. I have no complaints to day. Maybe never. I'm done complaining.



I am deeply grateful for all the things I am able to do today and these genuine people I've been able to meet. I'm having a good time.

Great story (stories), thank u.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

"This is your train conductor speaking, Welcome to Borgo Panigale!
Today's hi will be around 1,1000,000,00003°F
Have fun daydreaming through your endless meetings, meters away from where your bike was made."





There is something bizarre happening in Europe. We're getting windstorm from the Sahara Desert. It gets 100F in Florence which is insane. 80F used to be the Summer high.
It get's 80°F at 6,000' in the Alps! All the 50,000 year old glaciers are melting. 30 hikers just got buried by a glacier collapsing this week here.
Sometimes the sand from the African desert lands on cars in Turin, at the base of the Alps.
If anyone has some €$, lets plant some trees in the desert. This is actually a real project. I need to look it up.
Here's one of them

It was one of those sunny Sundays days after dumping rain for a way too long. A friend from Brazil with a 748 posted about heading over the Raticosa Pass to charge his battery. The usual snarky remarks went rebounding "just plug it in," however, we needed to charge the batteries of our souls, more than a battery tender could do. My hand went up and we met mid Mugello (The region of mountains within Tuscany north of Florence is Mugello. The racetrack is named after the group of mountains and valleys.)
It was afternoon and the Sun was already shy behind the trees. To our surprise the world tilted a bit more than expected during the rain and peak heat of the day was now noon-1 not 3-4 and sunset was 4:45! The afternoon was golden sun blasting through yellow leaves and all the rest was shades of blue.



We lit up and took off out of Scarperia, crossing the "Gothic Line" over Passo Giogo where the "Last Stand" of the Nazi army in WWII was held. My temp gauge started flashing yellow warning triangles as we dipped below 5C°. We stopped a sec to confront our reality. If we rode fast we'd catch the sunset at Raticosa and the ride back to Florence would be in failing light. "If we rode fast..." tires were not warming up at all despite the :40 mins he'd been on the road already and some rear slides were going on the way I was leading. We looked at each other with wicked smiles developing. My friends response, "C'est la vie."
That's why he's my friend.
Firenze-Scarperia-Passo Giogo-Firenzuola-Passo Raticosa-Passo della Futa-Panna-Barberino di Mugello- home

I just left Italy this morning, will make a post about it soon - was amazing as usual

KarlKani said:

I just left Italy this morning, will make a post about it soon - was amazing as usual

Click to expand...

I protest you've been twice and didn't ping me.

Aye sorry mate, next time

There is something so intriguing about the way a road lays on a set of hills. A single line that simply follows the curves at an arbitrary altitude. It’s a relationship that illustrates the character and geological history of a place. The way pavement lays across curves is somewhat sensual, to a cyclist, deeply emotional. The soft evenness, the shininess, the simplification of the geological character. Memories of blasting around corners feeling the G-forces, smelling the trees, hearing the engine, feeling its texture through your machine.



I’ve ridden out here just a few times now. I rode it with a video camera, I stopped and shot photos. None of it did any justice to what it felt like. You feel it, you remember it, you map it in your mind. But you can't see the design close to the ground.
So I went back with a drone now that the snows have started. It’s taken a few flights fighting wind weather and experimenting with the right method to capture its essence.

I love this road. It’s unimaginably dynamic. It starts in Olive trees, climbs through ancient chestnuts, into pine forests on the south side, across incredibly steep boulder outcroppings, tucks into birch woods following a river, then oak and out the south side into wildly rocky towers and cliffs.
It has a rhythm to it that changes every few miles. It's like dancing with the mountain.

The way you express yourself with words makes you sound like a writer. That adds to the reading experience.

double0 said:

The way you express yourself with words makes you sound like a writer. That adds to the reading experience.

Click to expand...

+1 on that. Reading that had such a visceral impact. I could almost feel the wind, smell the river, and hear the mountain.

It started snowing last night in upper Tuscany. The bikes are tucked away deep in the garage, so I've gone back to Road Porn.

Dreaming of when Mugello opens again in the Spring, I took a little flight over it at sunset to remember her curves. The misty clouds danced in the mountains behind as the wind toyed with my camera, froze my hands. Hard to believe it was 33C not long ago. Today it's 3C.

Stories the track tells
#15 Bucine, the final curve before the "straight." Actually a great place to pass. Most who don't know the track well get it wildly wrong. Most n00bs take the >180° as one long fast sweeper, which I have to admit is a complete blast amid what Simon Crafar calls, "the most fun section of any racetrack in the world," from turn 11 down the straight into turn 1.
It's ridden by the pros like a double apex doing most of the turning in the center, then spending the last 1/3 on the gas hard. It's a little downhill, positive camber and has mad grip. It also seems to be the place where I finally catch everyone I couldn't catch on the rest of the track.


Hollowed ground.



This isn't the place where everyone balls-it-up nor the most ominously frightening, that's at the other end of this straight, at "San Donato." However, this is where you start thinking about it with a big smile on your face. This is the place where you're winding it up, where your heart starts beating the second fastest it does on the track. The place dreams start pestering reality. Where you tell yourself "this time, I've got it, this time I'm breaking all my records." This is where, if you're hanging way off, you can get on the gas hard in 3rd and pin-it by the time you get your bike back to vertical. If you get that right, you've probably passed everyone near and now your bucking Ducati is marching through to 6th dancing on the rev limiter while you're skimming these beautiful red white and green stripes. You're lining up to start the attack at the finish line buzzing pitlane on the right and then the speed traps right after that insane kinked jump without a name. Pilots like Miller and Zarco catch a little air under both wheels blowing past 330kph over it. Jorge Martin hit 363.6kph (226.2 mph.) in 2022 here topping any cyclist in history on a GP circuit on his GP21 Ducati. In fact of the 10 Top Speed Records in MotoGP, 8 of 10 are here at Mugello.


This is it. The finish line. That stripe of checkers all the TV cameras are pointed at. This is where the big salaries are made.
Except the last lap, it goes very very unnoticed. Instead, you're watching that grass on the right your tires are 1 cm away from going almost 200mph. You're trying to find your marker up ahead over that blind hill, they say is in the middle down the Italian flag stripes all the way right under the bridges.
This is where the smile turns to gritting. This is where you feel the goosebumps, & the butterflies.



Holding that throttle pinned in 6th over the blind hump, feeling a bit weightless, a bit out of control, a bit on the bleeding edge.
The first thing you see at the top of the hill is that you went from the farthest right to the absolute left edge in a weightless split second. What you're supposed to do is keep the throttle pinned a bit more.
This is where butterflies turn to raging anxiety as the wind is torturing your helmet, grabbing at your back, whipping against your legs. Where you may now be sitting a little messy after that jump. Your engine is screaming and your bike has become a missile pointed at the trees. Somehow you have to get exactly in the right spot navigating the traffic, close gas, pulse brakes, tip in pointing to the top apex, then brake as hard as ever shitting yourself as you trail brake around the curve. The task entails dragging your eyes off the trees and around the corner as if they were 200 pound anchors, with more faith than a Tibetan monk you're going to make that uphill 180° hairpin called San Donato. Even Valentino Rossi attests to the extreme adrenaline dump here every single time & he must be riding this since he was 10 years old.

This is where your heart pounds so hard you hear it in your own ears. It all happens in splits of seconds. At the speeds a Panigale can generate, you're moving at more than 80 meters a second. The time it takes your average amateur to close the throttle and start activating their brakes, they've gone the distance of a football field. The red paint is 300 meters and you need all of it to slow enough to make this turn. Precious few in the world can do it in less space and make this turn carrying more than 130kmh around it. You can understand if you blink in the wrong spot you're going to get it wrong. You can see by the abundance of tire skids that point in all directions, that happens pretty often.
If you get it right, it's a brilliant place for overtaking and critical to set you up for the entire upper side of the track as it's all chicanes and esses until the big downhill.
If you get it right, you skim the last bit of the turn on the right on the gas to make a big sweeping esse left, right for a late entry into the first chicane where you can catch anyone who got it less than perfect.
If you get it wrong, your chances to catch anyone for another 1/3 of the track are slim to nill. Or you're in the gravel.

It's not that it's so impossible to navigate, it's that she begs you to push deeper into the braking zone at an always higher top speed.
It's that you have to test an always higher curve speed. It's a proposition impossible to say no to because it is just so absurdly extreme.
This is famously, the most challenging spot on the track because of the challenges she presents.

Love this thread

Dude. Seriously. Consider becoming a writer as a side gig, a hobby even.

I hate reading in general. Even about sports, cars, motorcycles, musicians and music, any one of my hobbies n interests but man, I'd read whatever you're writing.

Christmas Day, the lord parted clouds and said to me, 'This road is for you to ride, this sunset is the time,' so I rode and it was good.
December has been a shower. A symphony of gray & a study of bleak days that blend far too quickly into night and repeat.
With an invitation like this I didn't have to think twice though I did double take when the sun came out.
I put leathers on like firefighter puts on boots. I through off bike covers and track stands, fitted gloves while the engine warmed and blasted through opening gates.
The streets were mine. All souls were entertaining their generations captured by architecture and all their cars nestled in their beds.
Up up the curves I went over hills and hairpins.
The road rose relentlessly bending sharply for hamlets and curling around mountain refuges like taffy around a nail.





The brightest colors were fading red leaves, lifeless soaked stickers on the stripes of the road like little land mines waiting to slip a tire half a heartbeat.
Letting off steam twisting a throttle takes a matching dance between dry spots. Winter instinct kicks in when wrapping around to the north-side of the hills where the pavement gets green from endless flowing water.
Up up through the ceremony of quick lefts and rights.
Tipping deeper into the apex feeling the calm from rocking mixed with the adrenaline of risk. This is our speed ball. Our heroin & coke.
The engine is warm now and purring flames. The tires seem magic. I test them curve after curve looking for the edge. Where on the tachometer are they going to give? Where are they going to let go a squeal? The bike keeps purring with more fury. She is love. She doesn't let go and I don't push it into silliness.
I find the bottom of the clouds at around 4,000 feet as the sky goes orange and brilliant. It's time to stop and gaze at it all. Today is a few seconds longer than yesterday and I want those seconds with this place. When the Sun finally dips into the blue mountains I can go home to family roasting beasts and roots at my house. Wine will flow with stories and twinkling lights, next to trees moved into the living room. We'll celebrate with this odd mix of .......ized pagan winter-fest symbology adapted to the confusion of commercialism & Christianity. Non of that matters as they've been honing their kitchen skills and I've been to church to talk to God. He's good. We're good. Everything is cool.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Amen, brother!

The snow is all but gone from the shadowy corners atop the Appennini Mountains above the track, trees bursting into bloom and migrating geese honk passing over under starry skies.
The track opens in a couple of weeks. I had a little time to finish the second half.

CONTINUED FROM #1 Stories the track tells,

MUGELLO

#2 Stories the track tells,

Next up you’ve got the technical sections full of chicanes up the hill; this is where the workout gets most intense. Do it right and it all goes like smooth sweeping esses launching you into straights and back to sweeping esses through chicanes.
If you get San Donato (turn 1) wrong, you’ll be in the wrong spot to hit the first chicane late and get through Luco (2) & Poggio Secco (3) in the straightest sweeping line. That screws you up coming out of the last curve to go down the next set. You’ll be cockeyed wondering why you didn’t do more lateral sit-ups, why you didn’t go over the map, wondering if your insurance covers this, why you didn’t study harder in high school and why you chose a safe major in college leading to a job instead of your dreams realizing you’ll never retire with this inflation. You’ll be there trying to catch up to the past instead of leading now. Trying to catch everyone passing you from behind. Trying, instead of succeeding. Getting passed, experiencing the most desperate feeling imaginable, overwhelming your ego, intern hammering the throttle, torturing your tires down the back straight finding a spot over to the left side to get a late turn into Materassi (4). All because you let in a question instead of having an answer. A lot of bad things can happen for a hesitation. There you are now going too fast for corner entry, feeling the squirreling back tire stepping out to the left and right then becoming weightless leaving the ground as the nose of your bike dives compressing your front forks to their maximum. You are out of control and supposed to tip it in to the blind severely down hill right, Casanova (turn 6). It’s impossible to tell how much space you have to slow down for this corner entry from the far left. Your eye may grab a half a look at that soft gravel desert straight ahead. You could bail, you could chose an obvious path. You could go home and cry, you could be done with this nonsense. Why in God’s name do you do this any way? You impressed anyone today? No. You made money, you got taller?
Your woman could pet your head and make it better and you could get fat together and talk about food all day instead.




You might hear a faint voice amid the roar of an engine downshifting and your desperate exhale as your chin smashes into your helmet from the wind above your screen. Your arms may feel like they’ll break grunting a stiff arm on your bars until you’ve no longer got air in your chest.
If you’re living lucky, you may hear a tiny voice speaking with quiet but impossible clarity, unshakable confidence, bringing facts from your future.
“You got this.”
NOW!
Let go and f*ing turn!
Somehow you stop the panic and breathe, squeezing your tank with your legs as if riding a bull. Your upper body goes loose, you let your elbows drop and hold your Domino race-grips as delicately as a captured humming bird. The desperate three fingered braking goes into a one fingered release trail braking. You’ve just loaded the front with all your weight and now your down-force wings are exaggerating their effectiveness all just exactly in time for the big down hill drop right into Casanova (6).
You needed to do that. Accidental saves counts. You’ve got one more skill point.

Out of control becomes on the bleeding edge of your tires as you tip it in & muscle memory takes over. You bury your chest into the wind to the right of your front tire hovering just centimeters above the tarmac blurring by. You wrestle your bike down to you with your legs and she follows you as the G forces dropping 80 meters in a 3rd of a second rush your head giddy. Somehow you remember to breathe! There are no more thoughts just air rushing past your ears. You’re working like a Swiss watch.


You got 10 meters of beautiful tarmac on your right where you pick the stripes across the track to tip it back left and make the biggest set of sweepers on the track. It suddenly feels like you could go 1000. You give it more gas! Down the hill you go rushing into Savelli (8) a brief click into 4th and you give it more gas! Back to the left side as you look up hill to Arrabbiatta 1. You’re passing guys who don’t know how to get up the blind right that is Arrabbiatta 2. Their group is going wide where you can see further down field. But you know last lap you couldn’t give it enough gas here. You remember staying tight right and hammering it up and over that huge off camber blind lip in 3rd up in the revs to find yourself lined up for a little straight. It looks like a jump. It looks like you’re going to launch in to the heavens at that speed, but the climb is ever more gentle at the top & gets you to empty track with everyone else bunched up on the left side.


This is meaning. This is the expression of your existence. Being, bliss, the most noble Zen state.
You see some bikes ahead, or are they rabbits? If they’re rabbits, it’s time to catch them.
Basic instincts fully engaged.
Rabbits trying to escape into the tightest chicane on the circuit. They go in early to Scarperia (10) hitting the first right apex lining them up for a technical 90° left at Palagio (11). They’ve got to slow in between the right left to make the left or they’re in the weeds. You cancel the gap there was between you and them by going in late and missing the apex to hit the chicane down the middle lining you up for the massive advantage of a softer left aggressive on the gas. You’re now deep into what Simon Crafar calls “the funnest section of race track in all of MotoGP.”

You’re coming up on them and notice it might be the two fast guys that got through that last group ahead of you. They went through without a care, without the slightest tip of the hat. Like a hot knife through butter they escaped. Now they’ve slightly fluffed the technical section but were able to get on the gas early enough and stay in front down the straight before Correntaio (12) and they definitely have the horsepower. You all go into the 195° positive camber loop.
You leaned so far over you’re looking up and behind you to see where you’re going, coming around to west into the orange light of the afternoon Sun over the electric green grass of a Spring in Mugello. You’re scraping your knee, boot, your elbow, and almost your ass. There is no more lean that can be had. For a brief second the ground becomes a reference. You feel your bike moving gently against you in your hands and knees. It feels autonomous like it’s alive, like a horse, a friend, a companion. There are only sounds and heat and intense G forces pressing you into your saddle as gravity has gone almost horizontal. Somehow in this position of screwed up physics, you have no doubts, no questions. It’s as if your bike knows what to do and you let it. You’re just riding along, & looking where you are going to catch them.

You see them across the curve, coming around, lining them up, two guys tight together with matching gear. An extra tinge of adrenaline hits as you notice it’s those two french guys on the brand new black Aprilia RSV4 RR you saw in the paddocks. The bikes were intimidating. Dialed into to SBK perfection, open pipes and rear fins. Stuff we only saw on TV this season for the first time. They came in that Semi-Trailer with the 6 foot tinted windows that expanded into a two story village with tents and scooters and BBQ’s and a staff and hot women hanging around. They are definitely good, but they don’t know the track it seems. They didn’t bother. They just showed up in entourage with the 200+hp bikes to hammer it out. Must be nice. Maybe there is admiration here. Maybe you feel something for them just for a half a breath.
Maybe you wouldn’t mind showing them your backside as you fly past.


They take the hairpin like one long curve tight to the inside stripes. You double apex it carrying more speed all the way through. The second apex you’re smashed between your bike and the ground hanging off more than you ever have. Your steel tipped boot and right rearsets take a punishment against the tarmac a blink of a second and let off a few sparks. You’re not going to think about that right now though you may have lost a centimeter of metal in that blink going these speeds. You get close enough to show then a wheel hovering to their left and they stand their bikes up and hit the gas. They’ve definitely heard you there and it seems like it was a little spur to the ass. They may have picked up the pace a notch.

They take Biodetti (13), the final chicane sloppy cutting the tips off the curves over the rumble strips and you don’t. Their line was sacrilege. Ridiculous. Unnecessary. This is the funnest part. This is where you get up all your gander for the absurdity ahead. Easy curves you can absolutely hammer the gas without worry in a super quick tip Left GAS, tip Right GAS harder launching pad onto a 4th gear pinned gas all out 460 meters straight before the final curve on the track.
You’ve got one of them now. You’re dead center track, & he’s pretending to protect his line tight left on the stripes as they go into Buccine (14) following the giant sweeping 190° turn that it is, but you’ve got a better plan.

You let off the gas, ask for 3rd gear and tip into the biggest left on the track hitting the curb right behind the rear wheel of rabbit #2 who’s staying tight and you blow past him on the outside over shooting large using the first 1/4 of the curve as trail braking zone, then tip it hard almost 90° and get on the gas aiming for the second apex. You can roll onto almost full gas hanging off as you stand your bike up 3/4 into it. They are just feathering the gas in full lean angel. In between them you can hear their screaming Aprilias. High revving & a bit tinny with booming exhausts. You come up behind the rabbit in front almost to his wheel as he’s now on the gas as well drifting wide over to the right curb everyone preaches is the best line down the straight.

You’re heading outside right his rear tire. You’re close, but he’s got speed now and he’ll take you all the way out to the grass before you get passed him. You see his violent body gestures. He wants this. You stay hanging off tightening your line & cross his a hair behind and go left of him pinning the gassing. You’re still hanging off as you’re both on the gas 100% now lining up for the straight. You can hear his engine jump into 4th as he lurches faster and gets a few more meters on you.
You, 3rd gear.
Wait.



Your Panigale is screaming past 13,000RPM making a roar unique to this location. You bury your head behind your screen and become impossibly small inside your fairings. It takes everything to stay on. You grab the tank with your knees, tip your feet forward in front of the pegs to get any advantage to hang on. Your biceps are screaming as you rocket away. The vibrations are insane, 14,000RPMs becomes a hum.
4th gear!
It’s like the world goes into a blur. Your skin is numb, your hair standing up. You’re crunching your core muscles as hard as you can. Your mind is nothingness.

There is no fear, there is no meaning, there is only the tone of the Ducati. You come up on the Finish-Line side by side. Maybe you got him maybe not. You keep going. You’re side by side you & start to take him, he goes into 5th lurching forward again. NOT YET! You’ve bounced the rev limiter a millisecond
5TH gear!
You’re holding on with everything you’ve got. The engine’s hum becomes a tone and you become the bike. There is no difference between you and the machine.
This wildly roaring sound is music that blasts open the windows of Valhalla.
6TH gear, 185MPH, 190MPH…
Wind.
All of reality is wind and a blur of color and you moving through it.
It becomes as solid as the blast of a fire hose. Any baggy gear the wind can catch vibrates so hard you’ll find back & blue bruises under your leathers after.…
200MPH… Wind is trying to rip you off your bike and throw you into the sky. Every muscle that was burning hanging on through the acceleration now goes relaxed. You are nothing but a pair of eyes moving through a blur on a note of sound. You both launch over the famous hump under the bridges and you see rabbit #1 dissolving, disappearing behind you becoming a non-existent entity. A thing of the past. There is only you and the wind and the left wall down the Mugello Straight. You can hear its presence echo yours. Colors, stripes, signs, lights all a blur as the deep green of trees straight ahead comes into your awareness. The colors on your left go solid red signifying entering the braking zone. You breathe a sip and sit up to catch this wave of wind in your face. Your rear tire dances millimeters above the ground grabbing it now and then in the downshifts 5, 4, 3…
San Donato (1) is behind you and you’re lining up the first chicane to tip in late. All you did was lean your shoulders, breathe and you were around it. It’s no longer over thinking and trying. You are flying effortlessly. This is the expression of your being. This is your soul and your body and this bike and the wind as one moving over the Earth. As birds fly, you fly. Without thought, without reasons. Without governance. Just in case anyone asks why we do these crazy things.

So good

Vbreeze said:

Sometimes the sand from the African desert lands on cars in Turin

Click to expand...

I remember getting that in the UK over thirty years ago.

Keep this thread going - it's an excellent read and the pictures are awesome.

The Boys Are Back in Town! MUGELLO MOTO GP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(Spy video included, thanks to my friend Ivanone in DOC FI trackside today working Arrabbiata corners)
https://youtu.be/CA-8iNDNvHQ
Here in Mugello the buzz has begun. The party energy is raising. The MotoGP trucks are rolling in. Pecco Bangaia, Pirro and a few others are on the track this very moment getting some testing in. The relentless rains have finally taken a break, the Sun has come out giving to a one day change in temps from 50F to 70F! The hills around the track are teaming with yellow flowers and the forests all a bloom.
The usual local conversations circulate, "Not sure if there will be as many people now Vale has retired..." meanwhile record numbers have booked every place to sleep there is. Cafes, bars and restaurants were fully booked for months in advance. The tiny few rentals in Scarperia are going for €4,k a night at this point. I think it's safe to say, we're back to the usual mega party it has always been. On top of that, the airforce jets are back. A Mugello, Nessun Dorma! Speriamo bene ragazzi!


ok no video any more. Video stills