'Round the World with an Italian Supermodel

The Eiffel Tower holds a special place in my heart for a couple reasons. One of which is sentimental susceptibility to the explicit, mechanize, soulless aesthetics of power line towers.









The first indication I had of what riding a Ducati in Spain would be like (both he and his girlfriend were from Spain. From the look on his face, I have no doubt he left his heart in Paris, right there next to my bike).



The Musée de l'Armée, or The Army Museum. From suits of armor to WWII artifacts, it houses over 500,000 military-related weapons and items, including an entire floor devoted to white flags. (I kid, I kid!). A must visit.



Did some more riding around at night....Paris doesn't sleep early, but there sure are a lot less cars at night.

That is beauty captured in 9x16! True thanks!


Keep going!!!!

nice pictures!! thanks for sharing! i love paris too wish i could ride there one day...

Amazing photos, I've been to Bakersfield twice and 4 county fairs and I've never seen nothing like that now where, keep em coming.

Now, the one disadvantage of staying on the top floor of a residence that's right across from the Seine is this:



I don't care what country you're in, but if you combine teenagers with enough booze to bring down an elephant you're going to get two things: obnoxious noise and a great explanation as to why the buildings of the city run yellow in the morning.

As beautiful as Paris is during the day, ...... 'eh...at night it's mezmerizing, mysterious, romantic and a touch sinister.



























Brat packs along the Seine notwithstanding, a high average BAC in most cities = lots of aggression and stupidity. In Paris it just seemed to mellow everyone out. No chest pounding, no flexing like gorillas, no fist bumping, no fights.....well, ok, one fight on the sidewalk, but the girl clearly hadn't been taking her anti-psychotics and her friends did a fairly ok job at pulling her off of the people she was attacking.

Oh and before I forget, I saw that Ducati used the exact same location to do a photo shoot of the Scrambler I used, only they showed up during the day.



(I was there first!)

The local church, which Van Gogh had painted, made a most excellent backdrop in both real life and in photoshop:

Back in Paris:









Now regardless of whether or not I try, each time I visit a place (if I'm lucky), I walk away with a food or a drink, or a combination of the two that is wholly unique. A drink that conjures up not just the images, sights and sounds of a particular location during a particular time of my life, but a solid, if not amorphous, feeling of what it was like to be me, there. Icy Hornitos Tequila, salt and lime + Cucumber sandwiches = Cancun; Iced rum in the morning + fresh pineapple: Moorea; Teriyaki Steak sandwiches, brownies and Orange Hi-C: K-2nd grade. Jerk Chicken, Peas and Rice + vodka, pineapple-ginger syrup, lime & pepsi = Negril, Jamaica.

I'd have a time and a place for Hendrick's Gin, but at this point I associate Hendrick's the world over. (Such are the dilutions of space and time.) On this trip, Amaretto Cookies and Chianti will forever summon Milan to my frontal lobe; and now this, to be added to my previous culinary associations with Paris:



Fig jam, baguette, pan-crisp'd prosciutto + chilled Pinot.

With her ears back, she looks an awful lot like a dog that's apologizing for something very bad. Why is being bad always so irresistible?



On my way out of the city I stopped by and took a few more last, parting shots.





Sat there for a while, taking the last of Paris in (until I must inevitably return). Though I will always reserve and protect an aching, uncanny need for the type of isolation and solitude desolate, lonesome places provide, cities like Paris seduce, stimulate the imagination with unlimited possibilities. Whereas an environment like Death Valley stimulate a sense of personal power and capability, cities like Paris, Florence, Rome, Milan, Prague, Vienna, Amsterdam, Bruges, are filled with the end-results of that personal power, capability and vision put into action over and over over the course of thousands of years. To merely witness a city as not as a collection of streets, buildings and monuments--but as a culmination of human effort, both mental and physical, from an architects stroke of a pencil capturing thoughts late at night to the broken backs that hauled stones from 5 stories under ground to place them 5 stories above...all of it just absolutely destroys my ability to wrap a my head around the colossal, monumental endeavors that made it all possible. Nature may have a beauty all its own, but cities, truly grand cities, can inspire us to forge our contribution to the evolution of civilization. Only one person's name might be on the side of a building, anyone who's sweat and blood went into it knows who it really belongs to.

À la prochaine.



(I've got more videos of Paris for those who want to see more of the reckless insanity that makes it such a brilliant city to ride in....will post up before long.)

It's with a heavy heart that I left the city of love, the city of lights. But leaving wasn't the only reason I had a heavy heart. I was traveling to Nice. A place of significant, potent memories. My return will form an unavoidably dangerous crease in time, where the present collides with precedent.

Not soon after leaving, Paris' sunny skies turned a vulgar shade of gray. A drizzle turned into dotted droplets, which gave way to shower, then a lashing onslaught. I'm no stranger to the rain, but riding in this was a completely new experience.



I stopped into a gas station to get my rain gear on. Donning rain gear was useless, but I did it anyways. Half way through suiting up a gush of liquid that can only be described as a 'flash creek' swept through the 4' x 4' area on the ground I was using as my changing room, carrying gloves, a shirt and a sealed plastic bag filled with cables with it out into the parking lot. By the time I finished suiting up and dealing with the mess the deluge made of my belongings, the storm turned to just a rainy afternoon drizzle again.

The rain didn't last long...pretty much stopped by the time I did. Pulled off to get gas, which led me to an interesting little town.






And a church, of course, right in the center.











Still had some light left in the day, so I kept riding. (And had trouble avoiding distracting roads perpendicular to my direction of travel.)

Unreal, no?

Great stuff…..

Don't recall what town (or even what place) I stayed in. But it poured. ....... rained non stop through some of the best roads I'd seen so far. All I could do was try and keep 'er on the road, though. Roads were so twisty that it took a good 20 minutes before I could even pull over (no shoulder). Also burned a hole in my backpack when I leaned it up against the right side of the bike. Header...ooops. Lucky it didn't burn anything other than the backpack.

Blue skies returned, though, and the roads stayed super twisty. Gotta love the alps.

Made it to my place in Nice. Was intentionally not close to the ocean (too many people!) and the place had a not-so-terrible view.





Ate some lunch:


Then rolled out into the night with nowhere to go and nothing to do:



I had a kitchen for the first time in a long time, and took advantage of both it, fresh seafood and my hunger for all things unrelated to canned tuna.


(Paella!)

Now I'm

A. Hungry again. Thx
B. Want to go back to Europe for good.
C. Want video of the Alps ride!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I have commandeered a few pics for the background on my laptop. When you get back we need to ride all of North America together!

Thanks for promoting our sea to an Ocean

b9009b said:

Now I'm

A. Hungry again. Thx
B. Want to go back to Europe for good.
C. Want video of the Alps ride!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



I have commandeered a few pics for the background on my laptop. When you get back we need to ride all of North America together!

Click to expand...

All the videos I've uploaded are here

Still tons more, but videos take a back seat to pics and narrative.

Yr back, well done! I still have 4 SD cards full of this years Panigale in Eurooe adventure.. Damn I miss that bike... Can't wait I got first test ride from my dealer on the trio, scram, 1299 and multistroodles.
Anyhow will check out yr videos over the holiday and look forward to riding with you next year and having a beer
The Duchess

Been a bad last week. Long story, but lots of pain and discomfort involved. In any case....

I'd mentioned before that Nice was going to be tough for me. I'd been here before, only I spent a lot of time on a different kind of bike:



Ironman Nice.

It was one of the best years of my life. The rewards for years of school, hard work, loyalty, struggle and sacrifice were paying off. My job couldn't have been better, I had a beautiful and brilliant woman by my side and physically I was"¦.well"¦.read on.

Our bodies are just machines; complicated, sophisticated, but obtuse. Though it ultimately takes orders from our brains, this shell of cells and hair we live in complains endlessly, protesting against activities that don't involve Oreos, orgasms or sleep. The perpetual flow of unnecessarily alarming signals sent from the tips of our fingers to our brains are predominantly disproportionate to actual mortality threats. It could be argued that the incessant feedback we receive about "˜pain', hunger, cold, heat, could be biologically adaptive (survival in the wild tends to favor the oversensitive), but complete failure to inform us to things like, oh, brain tumors, demonstrates these signals we pay so much attention to are truly appeals for pleasure deceptively camouflaged as "˜protection'. Sensory skepticism, (and a healthy dose of receptive disdain) demolish prior notions of what we might thought possible, revealing capabilities of our bodies that previously would be unimaginable.

And that's why, in 2009, I came to the French Riviera: to ignore the winces and whines emanating from my flesh as my mind forced it to swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112, and run 26.2. 140.6 self-propelled miles, all in one day.



Truth and justice prevailed that year. I couldn't have been happier with everything in my life. The hairy hands of fate and the shadow of doom that had always lurked over my shoulder: gone. In its place, the feeling that what is wanted can be had: it was hope.


(Yes, this is the face of optimism.)

Of course anyone who knows my story knows that hope didn't last long. Brain tumor. Dreams turn to nightmares; castles to ashes. I'm alive, if not completely normal. Nice confirm ashes were ashes; I was there to ensure no part of me will ever mistake what was for what is.