Aloha

Edit: This has turned into a marathon post! So short story:

Hi!
I have a cosmetically not stunning 750 Dark which is nonetheless my pride and joy (picture attached hopefully). I also have no biker friends (except now Marcus and Ray from Rosso Corse who I seem to be visiting on a weekly basis!) so I’m hoping to meet up with some of you guys (and girls) at some events, and go for some rides! I’m for the moment pretty penniless so going to focus on riding, modding can come later!) .. so even this didn’t turn out to be a ‘short story’!
Oh yeah: I’m based in Tufnell Park, just north of Camden, but spend weekends in Hammersmith.
Thanks for having me

Long version:

Hi there,
I discovered (and have been througly enjoying) UKMOC for a few months and I thought I’d said hello, but turns out I haven’t.
So: bit of an intro, I’ve been keen on biking since I was a kid & was finally rich enough an old enough to get on one a year and a half ago, I did my cbt and scraped together enough for a Honda CG125 which I buzzed around on happily for a year, then I finally got together enough to do my test and then promptly went to HSBC and got a £2k loan to buy a CBR 600. Which I loved for a week until I woke up at 3am to hear its alarm and see someone close their white van and drive off with it ( don’t have a garage & didn’t have theft cover.. costly false ‘saving’!)
As you’d imagine I was pretty gutted but really couldn’t live without a bike (it’s almost a drug!) so my ex biker dad took pity on me and gave me a grand so I hopped on gumtree and found a 2000 reg 750M Dark. “In need of some TLC / cosmetic care” so not ideal, but with the money I had I knew I couldn’t be choosy, went round and saw it, and the guy fired it up in the garage.. so I obviously totally fell in love with the sound, and brought it home the next day. Mine is definitely a case in point of the saying: a Ducati that hasn’t had money spent on it... needs money spent on it! I took it to Ray at Rosso Corse for a service at Christmas: belts, front brake rebuild etc, etc, (£500) and since then have been back pretty much every week for little bits and pieces (Ray and Marcus now laugh when they see me, its that regular), so I’ve now spent well over a grand on it. But I still love the thing and it’s finally in good working order, touch wood. I do a 30 mile round commute so have put a couple of thousand miles on it & very much enjoyed it. Am a teacher so currently hardly eating let alone drinking to keep my bike on the road, but I do have a long list of prospective mods if/when I win the lottery! I have a well paid consultancy job lined up for next Jan so they’ll have to wait for then. Oh and apparently it was once owned by Jonny Lee Miller! Anyway here they are:

Current mods (when I brought it)
-CF tea tray with inbuilt indicators
- ‘Ducati Performance’ Remus high cans.

I have:
- Removed the front ‘bikini(?) fairing
- Got a smaller numb plate

Mods I want to make:
-Tail (& can?) chop
-LED indicators front and rear
-HID/Xenon lamp
- black (powdercoated?) rearsets and headlight casing
- smarter mirrors!
- a louder horn.
- lots of other bits and pieces I cant remember right now.. seen lots of inspiration on here, thanks! I think I'm more of a minimalist than a CF kinda guy!