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You’ll recall from an earlier entry, “uh-oh: no driver’s license”—

—that touching a knee to the ground in fast cornering is now de rigueur among road and track enthusiasts. (In this photo with the white Ducati, an instructor shows how to do a bit more than that.) I’m exaggerating only a little when I say that everybody’s doin’ it . . . or aspirin’ to do it.

Except me.

I have insisted all along that I pursued the dream of riding a Ducati, just one time, for the joy and not for the speed. As proof: I was still willing to pay my way to Italy even after discovering that without a driver’s license I was not going to be let out on the racetrack to do the knee-slider thing.

Well, let the secret be known. I did manage to get my knee down on the ground, and in the beginner’s class at that.

Three times!

ROUND ONE: no way am I getting a knee down!

In the first twenty-minute session of the day, as you can see in the photo at the very top of this entry, I rode in the only way I’d ever known, ca. 1965: sitting upright and leaning rigidly with the bike into the turns. Knee not down; failure.

ROUND TWO: knee down, the easy way!

I just let it drop.

It was soooo easy. Of course, it also hurt. So, I asked my instructor how to do it better.

ROUND THREE: get your knee waaay out there!

This too turned out to be a snap, for a long-legged guy.

My instructor was not impressed. He told me that knee sliding has to do with the problem of lean angle.

ROUND FOUR: so it’s about lean angle, huh?

Unfortunately, I misunderstood and thought he meant I should try to maximize lean angle. The result was a knee down, all right.

But it scared the hell out of the beginner behind me.

Experienced riders will note that, in all three photos, my line through the turn is extraordinarily consistent.

I am available for lessons.

(Not in motorcycle riding at speed. In Photoshop.)

(original photos: Claudio Massari, Ducati’s official DRE photographer; www.claudiomassari.net)