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[Eamonn (rhymes with “Damon”) Corcoran and his wife, Geraldine, hosted us in Dublin at the start and end of our vacation. Eamonn is a Ducatista from years back and a spark plug of the Irish Ducati Owners Club. Here’s his DRE reminiscence.—TF]

Well what do you expect when you hang around with a bunch of Irish Ducati owners? “Let’s go to Italy and visit the factory,” said someone. “Why not do the DRE and then visit the factory?” said another. And before we knew it, dates were checked and agreed and flights were booked.

The DRE is the Ducati Riding Experience, which is a one-day course, on a racetrack, with various levels of instruction from absolute beginners (such as Tom) to absolute bonkers (one-on-one instruction from a former world champion, on data-logged Ducati 1098S superbikes).

Having flown to Venice, hired two cars, and travelled down to Rimini, we found ourselves at Misano race circuit early on a beautiful Wednesday morning in June 2007, full of excitement and not a little trepidation. Row upon row of gleaming, new, red Ducati 1098s. What a beautiful sight!

On to the briefing, where we were introduced to our instructors: serious riders, serious racers actually. Oh holy God almighty! What have we done? Are we hopelessly out of our depth here? I mean I’d only done six track days at this point, two of our lads had only done two track days, one hadn’t done any (he fibbed on his application form).

Suddenly the fear began to rise in the pit of my stomach. Will we make a disgrace of ourselves and the Irish nation? But sure it’s only a bit of fun, and as long as we enjoy ourselves and nobody gets hurt, who cares if all of those foreign lads leave us for dead on the track? Well, actually we care; but not to worry, let’s just enjoy the day.

(continued on separate page with photos)