Sounds crazy, but Gary Eagan is planning on doing it. He got the invite and chose a Ducati 1098S as the means of conveyance. Personally, I think I would have chosen something a little more comfortable (actually, I would have said NO!), but the 1098 has had a bunch of mods to enhance comfort as well as extend its range. With only one rider, the biggest challenge will be the 35+ hours required to make the cross country trip with no sleep. Doable, but surely a dangerous undertaking. OneWheelDrive.net has the whole article and it is worth the time to read it. (Thanks Jerry!)
Here’s the tricky part. All the cars would have at least two drivers and loads of extra fuel, while as a moto jockey, I’d be a solo act with obvious limits on how much gasoline could be carried.
It took me at least a couple of seconds to swallow that hook. The table was set for fun ‘n games.
I ran the invitation past Steve Hicks, Ducati’s Canadian Service and Events Manager, and Jim McKenna, Ducati’s Sales and Marketing Manager for Canada. They looked at each other for a few seconds, and Hicks simply said; “This’ll be great. But you’re doing it on a 1098.” McKenna grinned in agreement.
Hicks is a master mechanic, and knows only one way to do things…with perfection. At the Toronto Motorcycle Show, and Hicks walked over to a Multistrada, took off the saddlebags, then held them along side our show-display black 1098 S, adding; “This is what we’re going to do. I’ve actually been thinking about doing this for a while now.”
Fitting the make over into his brutal work schedule was difficult, but in March Steve e-mailed me a picture, introducing me to what he called the “1098 Bagger.” He’d welded the bag mounts from the Multistrada to the sub frame, and when he mounted the bags it looked more like a factory-designed machine than a one-off tossed together in a garage. At least to my eye, it was a masterpiece.
Next step was increasing the fuel capacity, so I contacted Fuel Safe near Bend, Oregon, a company specializing in making custom fuel bladders for NASCAR, F 1 machines and airplanes. I sent them the Multistrada bags, Hicks gave them the green light to cook up a workable solution, and a month later they sent back another masterpiece. Semi-rigid fuel bladders for each bag, exactly fitting the interior shape of the Multi’s bags, and each holding about five gallons of fuel. They designed and installed beautiful billet filler nozzles protruding through the top of the bags and quick-release caps, allowing quick refilling without opening the bags.
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