Learning to Ride and Risk on a Ducati Monster 796

When you’re a teenager and didn’t grow up riding motorcycles, they come to feel like the juiciest of the forbidden fruits – dangerous, sexy, cool AF.

I can attest to this.

I remember trips out to the beach with my buddies back in high school and watching squids in white tank tops and flip-flops on their Gixxers and Ninjas cruise up and down the strip. It hurt seeing them ride by and knowing I couldn’t. My jealousy was palpable.

I finally learned to ride on my friend Shawn’s ratty purple Honda CBR600, his first bike. We were certain the bike had been previously wrecked; a closer inspection of the frame revealed some questionable details. We didn’t care. All that mattered is there was a motorcycle within arm’s reach and it ran.

So, like a newborn elephant finding its legs, I timidly nursed the beat up old Honda around a local parking lot on endless laps. I was hooked.

I proceeded to spend the next decade blindly rationalizing my lack of commitment to getting a bike. Some of it was the incredible things people said when they learned I was buying a motorcycle: “You’re doing what? I knew someone who died last year while riding,” or, “A friend of mine just crashed his bike,” or, “I’d never do that, motorcycles are just too dangerous.” Right. Like I didn’t know.

During those years, I had a fleeting obsession with the Honda CBR600RR, and the Suzuki Hayabusa for a hot second, too. Oh, what I would have done for even a moment in the saddle. But, it was the impossibly cool and cripplingly unattainable Ducati Monster 796 that stole my heart.

Fast forward to 2014 and through a tangled web of ‘this-guy-I-know-knows-a-guy’, I discovered a mint Monster 796available for a price so good I’d have to be a damn fool not to get it. I had recently passed my motorcycle safety course, I had no idea how to pay for it (hooray financing!), and thought to myself, “Am I going to spend my whole life running away from this? For what?”

So, I bought it.

When some people learned about what I’d done, they proceeded to flog me with all manner of excuses and warnings about the perils of buying a Ducati as a first bike and the unholy mess I’d gotten myself into.

Turns out, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. And, it’s not just that the Monster is every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped, but finally realizing my dream of riding is something that still brings me enormous pride.

Four years on, and I’m convinced that the Monster 796 is one of the best Ducatis of the modern era. It’s easy to ride, blends delightful power with genuine usability, is forgiving but still lithe and aggressive, and ticks all the right emotive boxes.

My favorite part has to be the way the twin exhaust pipes gurgle and pop on the overrun, especially in a lower gear when you chop the throttle – WHAP-pop-pop-WHAP-pop-pop-pop. I grin like an idiot every time.

As a testament to the Monster, consider this: I had the good fortune to ride a number of fantastic motorcycles last year including the Ducati 959 Panigale and Aprilia Tuono. Not once did I get back onto my Monster after riding them and feel discouraged about riding home. Rather, I was won over again by the bike’s simplicity and tactile, analog feel.

Buying a motorcycle isn’t a decision to be made on a whim, in my opinion. Both financial and physical risks should be weighed, and contemplation given to the depth of commitment to the decision. Every time the garage door slides up and I see my Monster sitting there, all muscles and glistening metal, I think to myself, “I’m glad I made it.”