So, about a month ago, Ducati offered me its Diavel model to ride, hoping we'd do a story on in the print version of Motorcycle Cruiser. Knowing how you folks feel about Ducatis, I turned them down. It turns out they made the same offer to editor Cherney. Except in his version, they offered one to ride home from Daytona. That made me pipe up to Tim Collins, the current PR dude at Ducati North America, "I'd totally ride a Diavel to Daytona..." and so it began.
There were a number of things that I'd assumed, most of which were wrong. I thought there might be a way to equip it with enough luggage for a two week trip (nope). I also thought I'd get to have it a week in advance to iron out the bugs (also, nope).

This is going to be something a little different for me (and for you). Since we get angry protests whenever a red bike that starts with the letter "D" shows up on the pages of Cruiser, we're going sequester this one on The Cloud. That said, it seems we all share a love for grand adventure, which this definitely is. Unfortunately, due to time constraints (and other things) this trip will mostly be by Interstate. As distasteful as that is (at least for me), a backroads trip to Florida from Los Angeles would simply be prohibitively long, and with the budget blown on getting there, what about Bike Week?

Read more: http://www.motorcyclecruiser.com/newsandupdates/1203_crup_ducati_to_daytona/index.html#ixzz1oUT10Mew