Well as you know I got the 996r on Saturday, I had been a little foolish as I had bought the bike unseen! The gentleman I bought it from had assured me on the telephone that the bike was as described and I would be very happy with it. However as you can imagine I was very nervous indeed but had a gut feeling the bike was a good un. Thanks to Tim and Shaun for the advice they gave me regarding its purchase.
I still had not got around to telling Lisa that I had spent a load of my hard earned on a new toy rather than the expected home renovation that has been ongoing for the last 4 years so when the owner said he could deliver the bike for £20 which saved me a 250 mile round trip I jumped at the chance. But I really did not want him to bring it to my house as that was not the way I wanted Lisa to first meet the 996 as I was still trying to think of a way of convincing her a new Ducati was better than a new bathroom! The owner mentioned he would be seeing his mother in Rochdale so I said I would meet him at Birch services on the M62, on arriving on time for once in my life there was no sign of him or the bike, after 20 minutes pacing up and down chain smoking in a torrential downpour I saw her in the flesh if you will for the first time. Absolutley beautiful! Even though she was sat on a trailer towed behind an X5 and had probably had thousands of gallons of water sprayed over her on the trip down it was still a sight for sore eyes.
We sat in his car and sorted all the paper work out whilst waiting for the rain to ease off a little and then decided to get it off his trailer and into my van. Now my van is only pretty small (Citroen Dispatch) but I have had a few bikes in it over the years so thought it would be pretty straightforward, of course thats not the way it turned out! The main problem was that I had not brought a ramp of any sort and the previous owner only had a ramp that came with his trailer, now his ramp was only a few feet long and when placed against the rear of my van and the floor made a ramp that you would not really want to push a bicycle up never mind a Ducati, also being made of aluminium and having no means of securing firmly to the van or the floor it really did not seem a good idea to even try to use it. So we decided we would lift the bike into the van, now I am a fairly big chap and have spent 20 years lifting and carrying pool tables, fruit machines, Juke boxes etc however the other chap was much much smaller than I so between us there was no way we could get it in the van. Of course by now there was a fair amount of spectators watching none of which offered to help.
By this time I even started thinking about removing both wheels from the rear of the van leaving it sitting on its axle so we could utilise the short ramp load the bike and refit the wheels! But after a bit of a scout around the services looking for a long plank that just may happen to be lying around we spotted a highish kerb near a loading area and backed the van up to that after riding the bike up onto the pavement above the kerb. We found a few bricks to put under the base of the ramp to bring it level with the top of the kerb and bobs yer uncle we managed to get the bike into the van and shuffle it around so it was diagonal so the back doors would close! All this took 90 minutes!
So I set off on the 40 minute journey home happy as Larry whover he is! When I arrived at the top of the lane that leads to my house my mobile rang it was my girlfriend who had not gone out shopping after all. Not wanting her to see the bike yet I turned round and headed for my friends house who has a very secure garage and a very long plank to use as a ramp. On arriving at his house he informed me he would not be much use in unloading as his shoulder was playing up after a recent operation on it. No problem I thought theres a long plank to make the job easy. Wrong this time the ramp was too long, way too long and too flexible! The problem was that as soon as a good proportion of the bikes weight was on the plank it flexed so much that the end of the plank inside the van was pulled outwards until only about a centimetre or so of it rested on the rear bumper so for safetys sake the bike was pushed back into the van! We of course tried putting the plank a little further into the van but because the van is only small there was very little space between the rear tyre and where the floor finishes. I ended up having to lift the rear wheel clear of the floor while my mate pushed the plank under the tyre he then had to stand on the end of the plank to keep it on the floor while I wheeled the bike out of course this made it all but impossible to get the front wheel on the plank as the van end of it was stuck about 8 inches into the air! We eventuallt got it out but it was scary as the long but not very thick plank was bending to an unbelievable degree!
All in it probably took over 2 hours to get the bike in and out of the van! I had also removed all the fairings just in case.
It was horrible having to leave the bike at my mates and go home alone but I knew I would get to ride her the day after (Sunday).
I knew things could only get better!