The Zombie Hat Chase

Pretty much everybody has had that nightmare where you feel as though you're running through Jell-O, body unable to execute the mind’s desperate pleas to sprint. One day in March of 2012, I found myself experiencing that scenario in real life, lurching down the corridors of Ducati’s Borgo Panigale headquarters like a character from Night of the Living Dead while my brain frantically urged my protesting limbs to turn over. "Chris, where are you?!" my boss's voice boomed through my cell phone. "We're about to start!"

The occasion was the Ducati Team’s 2012 pre-MotoGP season unveiling of the Desmosedici GP12, although the actual team launch had already taken place two months earlier at the gala event known as Wrooom. Once held every January at the Madonna di Campiglio ski resort in the Dolomite region of the Italian Alps, Wrooom was always a golden ticket for journalists, who were fêted for an entire week, with extended sessions of skiing, snowboarding, wining and dining only occasionally interrupted by the odd press conference.

The journalists’ workload for that year’s edition had been particularly light, as the traditional motorcycle unveiling was cut from the program. That move was prompted by then-Ducati Corse boss Filippo Preziosi’s attempt to improve chassis performance following Valentino Rossi’s disastrous 2011 Ducati debut, but while the motivation was laudable, the unveiling’s cancelation gave the event an anticlimactic feel—rather awkward for me as the team’s press officer. It was vital that this new, additional launch be a success.

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Valentino and Nicky--both safely behatted--at the 2012 Desmosedici unveiling. (Milagro photo)

Goodness knows enough work had gone into the preparation. Team sponsor TIM (owned by telecommunications company Telecom Italia) was set to livestream the event through their Facebook page--still a relatively ambitious idea back then--and Ducati's marketing department had performed its typically excellent promotional work. Fans were already logging on from around the world, and a select group of VIP guests (mostly executives from various team partners) was seated in the studio at that very moment. Famous Italian comedian Valerio Staffelli would be interviewing the riders on stage, and I was to translate for Rossi’s teammate, American Nicky Hayden. All of which made my current scenario—stumbling on protesting legs, across the Ducati campus from the studio where the event was set to kick off in minutes—somewhat inconvenient.

My body had been much more cooperative the day before, when I competed in the Rome Marathon, setting what is still my personal record over 26.2 miles. On the train ride back to Bologna that night though, my hamstrings began locking up. 

“That was a bit more abusive than we were led to believe,” I could imagine my muscles saying. “Hope you’re not expecting much out of us tomorrow...””

At first, I had managed launch day relatively well by carefully minimizing time spent on my feet. In fact, I was seated off-stage in the studio, chatting with the riders while awaiting the green light, when team marketing boss Alessandro Cicognani casually asked, "Nicky, can you please put on your team hat?" When the Kentucky Kid turned to me expectantly, the immediate realization of what I was about to endure made my head swim.

To this day, the memory of that fraught excursion is a blur punctuated by moments of clarity—my bizarre gait as I hurried through the building; the door to the Ducati Corse office requiring multiple swipes of my key card; madly rummaging through a metal cabinet; again staggering through the empty hallways; and finally bursting into the studio with one red flat-brim cap triumphantly in hand, just as the spotlight followed Staffelli onto the stage. I was a bit sweaty and breathless during the subsequent interview with a behatted Nicky, but it was a rare public performance during which my predominant emotion was more relief than nervousness.

Have a Moto story you'd like help telling for free? Email chris@jonnummedia.com

The Hayden Hauler

Road racing season is approaching, and by the time this story gets posted I’ll be in Australia for the last pre-season test and the first round of the 2017 World SBK Championship. I’m fortunate to get to fly to the races these days, but back when I was an amateur, the transportation was just a bit more… modest.

Almost exclusively, our family got to the races in a box van we used to own, that my dad had decked out in “Earl’s Racing Team” livery. That thing was our garage when we were at the track, and since it had a couch in the back and a “deck” on top of the box to watch the races from, I guess it could technically be called our hospitality unit too. Although we’d often get a hotel room at the races, it was usually so crowded that some people would just use the room’s shower and actually sleep in the van—so it served as lodging as well!

Mainly though, it was our hauler. For many of the races, we’d have all five of us kids, both of our parents and maybe a friend and a mechanic or two, so it could get pretty crowded in there—and that was just the people! It might be one of his fish tales, but my dad swears we used to fit in 12 or 14 bikes sometimes, although many of them were just 60s or 80s. To do that, we had to build a second level in back, sort of a poor man’s version of what the modern factory haulers do; first we’d fill up the ground floor, and then we’d take some folding tables that we used at the track and rest them on a T bracket and the lower bikes to serve as the floor of the second level.

Even that wasn’t always enough though. I remember one time we were getting ready to head home from Florida, and we had somehow accumulated enough stuff—I think maybe we gained a motorcycle, some trophies and a few other things at the race—that there literally wasn't enough room for everything. We ended up having to sell a tent and some tires and leave a couple gas cans behind.

The Hayden wrecking crew poses with their trophy haul behind the family box van. (Hayden family photo)

Everybody knows the deal where you try to call shotgun when it’s time to get in the vehicle, but for us kids, the spot to fight over was sitting on the cooler between the two front bucket seats. It may not have been so comfortable, but it gave you a good view of the road and you could control the radio and the CB. The only downside was that when you stood up for something, one of your brothers would probably open the lid so that if you weren’t paying attention, you’d fall into the ice water when you sat back down!

Of course that’s assuming you weren’t actually behind the steering wheel; depending on who's asking, I may or may not have put a pillow behind my back so that I could reach the pedals before I was “of age.” That probably wouldn't fly these days.

I remember one time we were headed across Texas early in the morning, when my dad asked my older brother Tommy to drive for a while so that he could climb up into the bunk and get some sleep. Not long after he drifted off, we kids spotted a sign for a water park, so we made an executive decision to pull over and wait for it to open at 10 a.m. By the time my dad popped his head out of the bunk, he figured we would be halfway home, so it was a bit of a rude awakening when he found out we were behind schedule by quite a bit.

There are a ton of fun stories based around that old box van, and maybe sometime I’ll share a few more. Like I said, it was pretty basic, but back in those days we kids thought it as the ultimate factory hauler.

Check out Nicky's personal website, and follow him on Twitter. Have a Moto Story you'd like help telling for free? Email chris@jonnummedia.com