851SPECIAL

How this bike came to me

(warning, 5 mile story)

When I was 16, a friend showed up one day with a Ducati. This was the first time I had ever seen a Ducati, or heard a Ducati and from the first of each, I was hooked and hooked in a really bad way. His name was Sergei Sikorsky and he was the grandson of the famed Igor who invented the helicopter. Sergei was a German Russian and had jumped all over the globe before landing in Newport due to his love to sailing and when he landed so did his love for 2 wheels.

The year was 1996 and the bike was a Paso 906 which had been crashed more times than one could imagine. Sergei would tell me that this one was stolen once, only to be driven only 1000 before the perpetrator squeezed too much throttle assuming it was a Japanese inline 4, wheeling it right into a car (this was common on Ducati's back then). I immediately asked if he would sell it to me, he immediately said no. After a year harassment, Sergei said "OK, I give" but he said he was going to go and ask my parents if it was ok. He did, and my parents said "we can't stop him" and so there it was, my first Ducati: The ugly duc, Paso 906.

Two years later I decided I was ready to graduate to a "real" bike and what I needed was a "superbike". I found an 888 in Arizona with my name on it and this was the start of my 4 valve affair with Ducati. On one of Sergei's and my many rides of the era, we swapped bikes and he had his first ride on an 888. When he got off he was speechless, honestly didn't talk much for a few weeks, the 888/851 had a way of doing that to people. Many years passed (5 or 6) and I get a call from Sergei who was living in Arkansas telling me he had never gotten the 888 out of his head from that ride and that he had tracked down an 851 with a troubled past, asking if I would look at pictures of the bike and advise if he should or should buy it. The bike was a 1992 851 Bi-posto and it had a rebuilt title due to a crash at some point but overall it was in good shape, a very good and solid "rider" of an 851, at the price they were asking I told him to buy it and he did.

Three or four years past and Sergei landed back in Newport, a little older and a little less stable, the later of these constants would be the one that got Sergei in the end. With him he brought a handful of bikes, one of which was the 851, now broken with what was likely a bad fuelpump. At the time I had a shop and took the bike in but never touched it as I was too busy building all the other bikes at the time. When I closed the shop, Sergei and I moved the 851 to a storage unit and that was the last I saw of the bike, or him for that matter. From that point, I moved away and started a family, Sergei moved to a boat and started to unravel.