Dan Neil’s review of the Ducati Multistrada V4 Rally opens with the bike already lying in the gravel. ‘Knock-on effects. Entropy. Causality. Chaos.’ He had pulled over beside 17 Mile Drive on the Monterey Peninsula to check an address when his left foot slid out from under him and the motorcycle fell heavily under what he calls his graceless straddle. This is a $33,790 machine, in Pebble Beach, on the ground.
The chain of causation is the good part. He could not fit his riding boots into his carry-on. The cycle shop in Monterey did not have his size. So he was wearing wingtips instead of boots, and in gravel, wingtips do not hold. The bike went down like a poleaxed giraffe. Then he tried to pick it up — correctly, too: turn your back to it, grip it underhanded by frame and handlebar, press to vertical with your legs rather than your back. His wingtips skidded out from under him again. The bike did not move. He writes that he might as well have tried uprooting a fire hydrant.
Why it was unliftable
Because this is the Rally, which is set up for long-distance touring: a 30-liter tank that holds 7.9 gallons and, when full, adds about 50 pounds to a dry weight of 529 — all of it up high. The test bike was also a rolling showroom of accessories, notably two aluminum cargo boxes mounted pannier-style. Not just heavy. Top heavy. On open roads it is a nimble machine, 170 horsepower from a 1,158-cc V4 with a counter-rotating crankshaft. In a parking lot, or on gravel, it is a different object entirely.
We run this column for a reason beyond the pleasure of the writing, though the writing is the reason it is fun. The failure here was not the bike, which is excellent, and not the rider, who is one of the best in the business and knew the correct lifting technique before he needed it. The failure was a pair of boots that did not fit in a bag.
The small omission that decides the outcome
This is the shape of most financial damage, and it almost never looks like a bad investment. It looks like a beneficiary form never updated after a remarriage. A term policy that lapsed during a job change nobody thought about. An old 401(k) at a former employer, still sitting in a default fund, forgotten for eleven years. A pension election chosen in a hurry at 62 that cannot be revisited. A will drafted in one state by a family that now lives in another.
None of those are failures of strategy. The strategy was often fine. They are the equivalent of the boots — a small item of equipment, obviously necessary, left behind because the bag was full and it was easier not to deal with it that day. And like the boots, they produce no consequence at all until the exact moment when the ground is loose.
The useful thing about this category is that it is finite and checkable. Beneficiary designations on every account. Whether the insurance is still in force and still adequate. Where the old employer plans are. What the pension election actually says. Titling on the house. That is an afternoon of unglamorous work, most of which can be done from a kitchen table with a folder.
Neil eventually got the bike up and, one assumes, enjoyed the rest of the ride enormously — it is a superb motorcycle on the roads it was built for. But the review is a permanent record of the fact that preparation gets tested at a moment of its own choosing, not yours. Fifteen minutes and the folder, and you will know whether your boots are in the bag.