Here she is. The Ducati bevel roundcase. Now mounted in the frame --soon she will be considered "merely" a part of a whole motorcycle. There are few motors out there, of any time period, in my opinion, that stand out as beautiful and complete all by their lonesome.
A good friend of mine, Garv Willmerding, of German dissent was actually the person who designed that motor. He was a renowned landscape Artist and some-time organ donor beloved expatriot on the island of Mykynos in the country of Greece. This was in the Mediterranean area of the country, the watery part, the same as Jason plied with his Argonauts. And so, just as Jason quested for the fleece, in far bygone days, Garv Fleeced the locals and tourists alike through his many scams. When he wasn't plundering antiquities from beneath the waves in his deep sea diver suit, he was flying contraband between the islands. That he designed, casted and forged the Ducatti's motor was really just a footnote to his middle earth exploits.
ReplyDeleteAccording to him, the design of the casings came to him after a brutal weekend of debauchery during his initiation into the cult of Dionysus. As Garv crawled out of the cave where the initiation took place, and vaguely remembered that he had promised to deliver a cask of bathtub Ouzo to a group of Albanian counterfeiters who lived on nearby Noxos. At the time he was flying a vintage 1927 radial-powered Bugatti biplane, the very same plane he learned to wing-walk on in his twenties when he was with Claxton-Guthaben's Pan-European Air Circus on the continent. The Bugatti was wonderful example of Italian style and mechanics, and they were fairly dependable fliers as long as you remember a few basic concepts. For instance, never ever trust Italian-made gauges (most of you Ducatti junkies know wherefore I speak...) But Garv was still reeling from the profundities revealed to him in the cave; visions of the Minotaur and the words of the Oracle, and neglected to peek in the plane's gas tank, and of course the results were what one would expect(That Garv managed to grab his chute and get out on the wing is a testament to his cool Teutonic heritage) and as the Bugatti coughed its last, he jumped. He was lucky that he managed to yank the rip cord before his head struck the rudder.
Now Garv, whether he was flying or helping some rustic chambermaid "make the bed", always wore a WWI horse-hide helmet The story goes that the helmet was a gift from Baron Von Richthofen's widow, the Baroness Von Richthofen, for services rendered to her while on the ill-fated Anglo-Prussian mountaineering expedition up the Matterhorn. (He also claims to have received a fine pair of German riding boots and crop from Von Bismark as thanks for an emergency appendectomy, but I have yet to see them).
Well that horse-hide helmut nearly cost Garv his life and if you see him behind the stick today you'll note that he wears a very modern, crash helmet. But I digress...
The Ducatti's design came to him as he regained consciousness. As he was licked awake by a flock of goats, he saw something shiny a few feet away. It turned out to be all that was left of the Biplanes motor - two cylinders to be exact - and he hurriedly sketched what he saw. Upon arriving back on Mykynos, he set the local smith to building a blast furnace and a week later the prototype Ducatti motor was born.
Why was he dissenting against the Germans?
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