Early Season Ride

It's mid May and I'm getting a little anxious for the weather to settle down so I can ride the Ducati in ernest. It finally turned from mostly snow showers to mostly rain showers with the intermittent overwhelming hail storm. So when I get a little window of opportunity to take the 748s out for a spin I jump on it.

The Mountain Course

Still a lot of gravel on the roads and the occasional creek crossing. My route today took me by the Penrose Heritage Museum which houses the Pikes Peak Hill Climb Experience. It is the official Pikes Peak Hill Climb Museum and it is spectacular. Jason Campbell is the head curator there and a great guy to talk to about the race and museum. He really knows his stuff and loves to educate and amuse the museum guests. The museum is free and is open till 5pm most days. Also worth noting is that you can park in the underground parking garage and have your ticket validated by the museum for free parking. Nice.

Carlin Dunne's record setting Ducati Multistrada

Behind Carlin's Ducati is the display case with the Pikes Peak Hill Climb trophy. On top of the case is the PPIHC 9 minute club trophy. It has the names of the racers that have broken the 10 minute barrier. It's a small but impressive list of names, such as, Sebastien Loeb, Rhys Millen, Nobuhiro Tajima, Roman Dumas, Paul Dallenbach, Greg Trachy (who by the way should have his name on there twice since he's the only person to have broken 10 minutes in a car and on a bike), Clint Vasholtz, Jeremy Toye, and of course Carlin.