. Imola on a 999: Say Hello to Heaven........

How It Happened
Once a year I catch up with my boss. Last year I didn't go to Italy, but I met up with him at the Brands Hatch round. What we do when we meet is slap each other on the back, congratulate ourselves on a job well done, and that's about it. This year, it made sense to return to Italy, to make an appearance at Ducati.com and to see my cyberspace comrades.

This is DJ's first year teaching the DRE (Ducati Racing Experience) course. They wanted an instructor fluent in English and he's pretty damn fast, so he fit the bill. I wanted to attend one so he looked into it and got back to me and said that I got approval to go. So we looked at the calendar and saw that throughout the season there was one work conflict after another. Getting me there for the first DRE of the year on March 24 was the best time so we settled on that.  

The Day Before
The day before DRE I wanted to cry. It was raining all day long and it was a cold rain. The risk of taking DRE so early in the year is that the weather is still unsettled, and here I had flown way too many hours, most of them in front of a brat who screamed and kicked my seat almost the entire way, to tip-toe around a wet track (I don't believe this event was sold out, while the next two in April and May are already completely booked). What an impending waste of a great bike on a historical track. I was forlorn; you may as well have told me my dog died...after burying the keys to my bike in the backyard. Sadness.    

The Day Of
I woke up and looked out the window. Un-fukcing-believable, but the sun was shining. DJ picked me up and we got to the track before the paying guests showed up. He hooked up with Dario Marchetti, who oversees the DRE program, and they chatted for a while (Dario is an endurance racer and also this year's winner of the Battle of the Twins race at Daytona; he speaks pretty good English). I had nothing to do so I just roamed around killing time. Being language impaired, it's not as if I could've walked up to someone and asked if they had been on the track before.

About a half hour later, DJ took me to the registration area to make sure I was properly signed in. They had a preprinted form that basically made very little sense to me but I wrote down the information I think they wanted and signed in a few places. To try to divide the groups into comparable skill levels, they ask you if you've been on the track more or less than ten times. I had answered "more" so I was handed a yellow armband which I was to wear so the instructors knew which group I belonged to should I wander off with amnesia.

Orientation, aka "Blah blah blah"
The day started with orientation in the press room above pit lane. I had my leathers on and when I walked in I got a few stares for � and I am guessing � being Asian, being female, and for having devirginized custom leathers. Getting sized up is a universal language. There were a lot of women in attendance, but most were wearing the leathers provided by Ducati which indicated that they were in the beginners' school taking place in the parking lot. Nobody knew where I figured into all of this and it probably made it all that much weirder that I was speaking English. 

At the start of the program, I could ascertain that someone was giving a lecture on health and well-being. What that had to do with uncaging the rabid squirrels pounding in our chests and foaming to get on the track, who knows. Ok, so it's good to be healthy when you ride, but I'd argue that it's good to be healthy to walk to the cafe to get my coffee so I thought this speech was best saved for the public service announcement on MTV (btw, a witness reported that an unnamed instructor excused himself to go smoke a cigarette just as the Minister of Health launched into his lecture.)

When that was done, I think Marchetti talked about how the day was going to go. Or, he might've talked about bedding Katja Poensgen for all I know. I just kept staring as if Italian would suddenly make sense. I think I know how a dog feels when its master is talking to it: "Blah blah blah blah...SIT!...blah blah blah blah..."

I think I would've been nervous had I not had track experience; I can't imagine being a track virgin and not having a clue what anyone was saying. I understood track protocol and felt confident I would have no problems so I felt relaxed about what was ahead of me.    

And Finally, The Inner Rabid Squirrel Is Unleashed
When the meeting adjourned, we went down to the garage where the bikes were. There were around 25 bikes and the four or five groups would alternate time out on the track (I think the biggest group was the track novices). The instructor in charge of the yellow group was Ricardo Kapakkio, who works for Motociclismo magazine. On our first trip out, we lined up behind Ricardo and followed him around the track to get to know it. We did the drill where the lead rider does a lap, then drops to the back, and the next person leads the lap.

Imola is a challenging track in that many of the turns are blind. You don't really know where you have to go until you crest a rise or get around a bend. I've been on six other tracks and this one was the least advantageous from a visual standpoint. The track is fairly high speed and technical. My personal challenge for the day was memorizing the circuit as quickly as I could so I could connect the turns and really get a fast flow going.

Between every session I literally sat down in front of the map and stared at it. I looked at each turn, closed my eyes, and searched through my memory so I could replay it. Ricardo, who spoke pretty good English, told me some of the quirks of the track (e.g., ripples created by the F1 cars worth avoiding) and where to set up for the turns. I have bad spatial memory; I've ridden Palomar a million times and I'll never get the turns wired in my head. That's just the way it is for some people; I'm that ungifted person who has to study extra harder to try to get an A, and usually I'm lucky to get a B-.  

After the second session, things were starting to click. Ricardo told me that in the first session I probably lost the line like ten times, by the second session I lost it maybe three times, and by the afternoon I probably wouldn't lose it at all. I was pretty excited. It was fun to ride the track, but I was looking forward to feeling like I had it figured out from start to finish. 

In terms of skill level, everybody in my group was pretty well matched. The really odd thing was that not a single one of the guys in my group hung off their bikes through the turns. They'd pin it from one turn to the next, brake hard, and then square off the turns. My guess is that they're pretty good street riders but they just haven't spent lots of time on the track. (Later that evening we had drinks with the English speakers from Luxembourg. I told Paul that he rode well but he needed to hang off. He said he knew he did but for some reason it disturbed him to do it. I told him that hanging off meant he'd already be almost on the ground in case of a "traction malfunction." He expressed no comfort in that concept, not even after several beers.)

Between sessions I went out to watch the beginners toodle around the cones in the paddock. Much to my surprise, part of the drill required that they have the male instructor as a passenger. I've been riding for a long time and the last time I had Chris on the back I was keenly aware of his weight. I would've told the instructor, "You sure you want me to dump this thing with you on it?" Sure enough, one of the gals �  sans instructor � flopped over in the lot. My heart goes out to everyone trying to learn. Except for the naturally talented among us, the learning curve is not an easy one.

Your Nose Seen Through His Eyes
While I was watching the beginners, I heard someone say, "Zina, come with me." A man in an orange jacket took me by the hand and led me to a seat. Uh oh. It was the artist who draws the Ducati cartoons � the ones where Troy Bayliss has the nose of a sickle and Loris looks like a tired monkey. As a part of the DRE package, he was there to do sketches for anyone who wanted one. I don't have a self-esteem problem, but I really didn't need to see a pug-nosed, bucktoothed, bloated-lipped cartoon of myself to help initiate a self-esteem problem. He sketched away and would present me with the drawing at the end of the day (along with the others to their respective owners).

Another session and Imola and I were really bonding. It loved me. I loved it. The 999 was stellar. It wasn't set up for me at all yet it still handled incredibly well (the stiff suspension resulted in some exaggerating of bumps, but the bike always settled back down immediately). The bigger 999 was easier to turn than my Aprilia RS250. The biggest concern I had was to check my throttle hand. With my no-torque two-stroke, I've learned to abuse the throttle anytime and anywhere with no ramifications. I had to constantly remind myself to be smooth with the throttle while coming out of the turns because I was track trained on my bike to pin it out of all turns. I also had to remind myself not to downshift so much since I had a broader power band to work with. Excessively high RPMs and a heavy throttle hand was a highside waiting to happen. I did not want to learn first hand how skilled the local Italian doctors were about reassembling a foot with pre-existing hardware. 
                
Lunch
Lunch was held upstairs above the garages. It was a cafeteria style set-up: You point at what you wanted and the person scooped it up for you. None of the food employees were smiling so I just pointed at a white pasta, grabbed a bottle of water, and hustled off. I'm learning that I don't like being around unhappy looking people who don't speak my language; it puts me off much moreso than rude English speakers. It's like my boss told me when he first got to Italy and didn't speak Italian: You learn about people by their body language. These food scoopers had funky mojo. I didn't want it transported through their ladles and onto my food and into my body and then onto the 999. I had a serious Happy Shine going on and I wanted it to stay that way.

More Track Time
After lunch we had three more sessions. They each ran about 20 minutes in length, which is a good amount of time when you're riding as hard as your inner rabid squirrel is letting you. Ricardo worked with me some more to get me to better hit the apexes and then carry the speed out to the other edge of the track. It's something you know as a racer, but totally forget when you're in a new place. As he said with a smile: "You paid to use the track...why not use all of it?" He was a good teacher and I appreciated his enthusiasm. 

During one of the sessions, the advanced group came by me. Hmmmm...the speed difference isn't hideous...perhaps I could keep up with them? Particularly motivational was that there was only one other woman (Italian) on the track and she was in this group...and there she was. I hung behind her for a few laps. Marchetti eventually came by (it was his group) and we entered into lap traffic and I lost touch with all of them. Later on Marchetti came up to me and said that I had nice form and rode well. I thought that was very nice of him to say since he could've just as easily gone on with this day without saying two words to me. Just further evidence that the instructors were watching the students. Or maybe just watching the girls? Worked out for me. 

The Day's Done...Here's Your Face
After the day was done, we gathered again in the press room to receive our course certificates and sketches from Matitaccia. He'd say something in Italian, hold up the picture for all to see, everyone would laugh, and then the recipient would go up to get it, some more sheepishly than others. I was hoping for Betty Boop with slanty eyes, but it didn't turn out that way. Hey, at least I didn't pay for it.

There were smiles and handshakes all around. It was a great day on probably one of the most fun and beautiful tracks in the world. If I were filthy rich and had friends, I'd buy out an entire DRE course and invite all my buddies to it. Unfortunately, I'm not filthy rich and I don't even have enough friends to fill one group, so maybe one of ya'll out there can do it and invite me back... 
 

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