Desmolu

The next afternoon we woke to our friend Swampduc picking us and the bikes up in his truck, he had been driving from Louisiana to DITR (Ducati In The Rockies). We loaded the bikes up on the trailer and proceeded to drive the long, boring road that took us from TX to NM where spend the night with some family.

Bright and early the next morning we meet a posse of Ducati riders coming from Albuquerque at a *very* local joint for breakfast on the road to Colorado. The site of over a dozen Ducs rolling into this small town hole in the wall gets everyone off their seat. I am almost certain that they have posted a picture of our group on their wall at this point. The highlight of the meal is that the menu differentiates burritos between “handheld” and “smothered” (as in chili). As you can imagine, the “handheld sausage” jokes were endless. When we arrive in Durango we are still making “bet you are still full of that handheld sausage from earlier, eh? was it spicy?” jokes.

Matador has made the incredibly generous offer to drive the truck and trailer so that Swampduc and I can ride up with the rest of the crew. As we pull out of Durango and the road starts to look like this:

he is regretting that decision.

Pictures don’t do the road justice. For anyone who hasn’t ridden the Million Dollar Highway, DO IT NOW. Stop everything. Your kids don’t need a babysitter. Your boss doesn’t need to approve. Just drop everything and go ride this road.

When you do ride it though, make sure that your clutch isn’t being finicky. Pulling out of the Silverton fuel stop, I had nothing but play in my clutch. After fiddling with it for a few, it seemed ok and since the entire group was gone, I just said screw it and tailed off after them. Now, clutchless downshifting isn’t really something I had learned to do. I’m still a bit of a newb with less than 10K/2 years under my belt, no track time, and no elevation changes aside from 4 or 5 awesome hill country trips a year. Needless to say, an 8,000 ft descent of switchbacks into Ouray with a playful clutch was one hell of a rush.

When we finally pull into the lodge in Ouray everyone is admiring the view and getting to know one another. Everyone except for Matador. He doesn’t say a word, just jumps out of the truck, unloads the S2R and gets up the 550 pass as soon as he can!