Behind the swinging black doors (double-wide, I noticed with relief, as I was going to have to come back through them after the feast), Chris and Bob were setting up the latest in Ducati café racers. One, a seductively red creature with a seventies style half-fairing kept whispering to me. I was about to court her until I noticed she was whispering to many others in the room as well, the tramp. In any case, on the stage around the display bikes from Cliff’s were the raffle prizes for the night. More on that later, but why does an article on the DESMO party start with a celebration of cycles and swag? Because it was Christmas, silly, and we really did feel the reckless fettle of that occasion. Just ask Liz, the latest addition to our fellowship who won a Suomy helmet, a Ducati denim jacket and a Bridgestone hat. More on that later, but why does an article on the DESMO party start with a celebration of cycles and swag?

    The 6th annual DESMO Christmas party was scheduled to kick off at seven-thirty at the family-friendly canteen of Dave and Buster’s. At seven punctually the room was crowded. Everyone was there, it seemed, but my wife and daughters who could not quite yet pull themselves from the gaming parlor directly behind those self same double-wide swinging black doors. It’s amazing the tricks some people use to keep their marriages alive.

    The banquet this year was extra special. Besides offering prime roast beef and chicken parmigiano, there was actually nearly enough food for everyone. There was a salad of fresh greens and three different colored dressings that could be combined variously to represent 117 national flags. Desserts and coffee further calmed an already stupefied crowd, and the room was strangely quiet when the raffle began. The burbling that sometimes escaped my lips in the later stages of torpid abandon, my wife assured me, sounded just like a motorcycle, a really big one, too. Apologies to anyone who was put off by the drool.

    JackD, God bless him, won nearly enough prizes to match his extraordinary years. The team Tracy and Roger cleaned up, of course, but no one resented it, and calls of “fix” or “rigged” were really in jest, as were the eggs, broccoli spears, and mutterances that found themselves airborne and somehow directed at DESMO’s handsomest couple. Me, I had seconds on apple pastries, thank you. Other notable winners were Lew Wallace, whose acquisition of a busted up tail piece provided gracious complement to his own condition, Nick Sloanhoffer, whose $140 of raffle tickets easily garnered him twenty worth of T-shirts, and my own darling daughter who won the Ducati messenger bag, but that was because she asked her mother for five extra dollars and put it all in Ben’s hand.

    But what is this party all about? We love Ducatis, Christmas and all manner of festivities, but damn, it really seems we like each other a lot, too. I was genuinely happy to see riders, friends, men and women whom I, like everyone else there, had grown fond of over the years in DESMO. Hey, read it on list, this is the best group ever.

Many many thanks to Jon, Ben, and all the sponsors whose presence and presents made this another deliriously successful occasion, and special thanks to Cliff’s for attending.