A week before my trip, a friend took out one of the standard Mille RSVs from Scuderia West-our local San Francisco Aprilia dealer-and after flogging it around the city, he told me that it was a bitch'n bike. The next thing you know, I'm on a plane for Spain laughing the whole way in anticipation.

The RSV Mille R is meant to bridge the gap between the ultra trick, very expensive ($32,000.00), hard to get (150 units only, this year) RSV Mille SP and the standard RSV. The Italians have produced some very beautiful bikes over the years and this is no exception. I hoped it worked as good as it looked.

The first morning in Spain it was raining a little at the track. Never fear, we grabbed our stuff and piled into a van and headed to it. The Valencia circuit is a great track that's only a few years old. The track surface is smooth and the layout is real cool; not too fast with plenty of turns and hard braking spots. There are a few tricky spots, too, like the big sweeper leading up to the last hairpin. You just don't know how fast to go, then you can't quite tell where to start braking so you tend to brake too early or to overshoot. The grandstands circle three quarters of the circuit so the spectators can see the whole track layout pretty much from anywhere they sit, and the garages are state of the art. It must be like a crazy bullfight there when the races are going on, people yelling from every corner of the track and you'd see and hear them all.