Ducati ! This brings back memories.
I've been out of motorcycling for over 20 years. But in 1974 I bought a Ducati 750 GT. It was really neat bike. In '79 I sold it to a friend of my cousin in order to finance the purchase of a HD Superglide (FXE). The guy that bought it was a pot head; he was always high on something and I felt a bit guilty about selling the Ducati to him because I knew the bike would end up wrecked, abused, neglected, or whatever. But money was money so I watched the Ducati drive away and a few days later I had Superglide in the driveway. The Ducati had around 30K miles on it when I sold it in '79.
22 years later - somewhere around 2000 or 2001 - my mother went with my aunt (my cousins mother) to a baby shower for some other relative who I barely knew. At the end of the baby shower, the husbands and boyfriends were all showing up to pick up their spouses, having coffee and sampling whatever was left of the food. This "guy" came over to my mother and introduced himself, said that she probably wouldn't remember him but that he had been to our house as a 19 yr old back in the late '70s and that he had bought my Ducati. He told her, " be sure to tell Phil [that's me] that I still have the bike, it has 270,000 miles on it, and it still runs great".
Talk about being shocked and pleased all at the same time when I heard this.
I have never seen a Ducati 750 since I sold mine. They were as rare as hens teeth back then and I guess they still are. I can still hear the distinctive sound of that bike with the megaphone-style Conti mufflers it came with. Awesome.
