I took my Monster 795 out for a spin today. It's my first ride on a Ducati.
When I left home, I had no idea how the bike will handle, especially how it will handle in heavy traffic jam. Handling in really slow moving traffic jam is important for me, cause I plan to commute on this bike, and about 50% of my daily ride will be spent in really heavy traffic, crawling at less than 10 kph.
So after I fill up the tank, I go to area with heavy traffic, which is quite easy to find in Jakarta on Saturdays, just go to any shopping malls area, and you will find heavy, crawling traffic there.
Anyway, turns out my bike rides and handles really well in slow moving traffic, stop and go traffic. It's really nimble, agile and light, that filtering through traffic is really easy. Slow ridding at 5 kph is easy. On my Sportster, one thing that I love to do is to tail a scooter. Pick any scooter and closely follow it, tail it in slow moving traffic. I had no problem doing that on Monster 795, in fact it's a lot easier to do on the Monster.
In slow moving traffic I have a winner here. Then on normal traffic, it's really a winner. Lane splitting, which I do all the time, is really fun and easy on this bike despite the wide stock mirror, which BTW is not a problem at all. I thought the width of the stock mirrors would be a bit of problem when lane splitting, but turns out it's not a problem at all.
I find that riding the monster, to me, strangely feels like not riding at all. It's difficult to explain ... but when riding it, the bike feels like it's just not there, feels like like it disappears from underneath me. It feels like I was walking or something, it's like I can change direction just by thinking about changing direction, effortless.
In summary, I really love this Monster. I bought it cause I really love how it looks, now after riding it I really love how it handles, how it rides. It's a great bike.
Thanks for listening guys.
bob