Having decided that Pegasus in Reading were to be my chosen victims, time for them to put their money where their mouth was, before I’d do likewise. So it’s a quick phone call — “Hi, remember me? – I’m the guy who got lost getting to you last week, turned up 2 minutes before you closed, parked on the pavement and kept you half an hour talking about Ducatis”. And rather than simply put the phone down and emigrate, they came back with “sure, and you’d now like a test ride, right? No problem, what would you like to try?”
Back to the sensibility versus desire thing — I’m a returning biker after many years layoff, so surely best to start with something at the sensible and less intimidating end of the range — a Monster? 900 or 750ss? Nah — been there, done that – want a faired bike and my old Pantah had pretty much the same engine in the early eighties. So that leaves the semi-sensible — the ST4 sports tourer and, of course, the insane — those design icons of the hypersports world, the 748 and 916.
Now the ST4 has the 916 engine and the 748 has essentially the same chassis as the 916, so the obvious thing to do was to test ride the ST4 and the 748 and if I liked the engine of one and the chassis of the other, then the answer would be a 916. Easy — Logic 101. But would they do it? “No problem — come along Saturday, and we’ll have PDI’d one of each for you to try”. Erk – so not only was I going to have to risk making a complete fool of myself in public but was going to have to do so on brand new machines with precisely no miles on their clocks — falling off would be double plus ungood.

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