Distinguished Gentlemans Ride

CLICK HERE to see a few short minutes of the Distinguished Gentlemans Ride in Frankfurt followed by riding the Ducati Mike Hailwood Replica back home through the beautiful Taunus district on a wonderful sunny late September day.
You can see more of this excellent event on the photo gallery page.

Starting the Hailwood film

A short film cut together to show our film editor professionals the sequence for the starting scene, and of course the shots of the bike being riden out of the yard, can't miss that sound.
1 minute 2 seconds.

filming on the road 1min 22sec.

One of the shots for the videos, a nice stretch of road not too far away with a couple of sharp hairpin bends. Great for filming from the roadside because the speed is relatively low and looks great on board with plenty of acceleration. The tank top camera doesn't get the full blast from the exhausts but that will all be rectified in the final cut.

directors cut 1min 15sec.

and this time I tried my own cutting, not so easy but fun to try. Certainly not what I was wanting, let's see how the professionals get on with all the material we've made. This is only part of the story.

to the Nurburgring

As the DB2 had developed a clutch slave cylinder leak coming back from the Schottenring, I used the trusty Hailwood the following day to join in a grand tour of the Odenwald and Spessart. Then on Monday we all rode together to the Nürburgring to say farewell to those that had made the trip from the UK. And we found some great roads!

tea party 2011

the Hailwood lined up with the DB2 and 851 prior to the 2011 tea party

just got it

Nearly 25 years ago I scratched together all the money I had to replace my unreliable Moto Guzzi Le mans with what almost surely would be a more unreliable bike? Especially as I still had 3 more years to study, which promised to be 3 quite poor years. However the Ducati proved very faithful, finally needing new clutch plates around final graduation time.