Beemer Report Card, Summer Semester
Beemer report card, summer semester
LEANINGS
Peter Egan
WHILE 9000 MILES PROBABLY DOESN’T sound like much to a hard-core Iron Butt rider, it represents a new one-bike summer record for a person with my tragically short attention span. After all, I am a member of the Slimey Crud Motorcycle Gang, where our motto is “Ride Hard, Ride Short.” We are nothing if not erratic and mercurial.
Nevertheless, I really did manage to rack up 9K on just one motorcycle this summer, the gray ’04 BMW R1150RT I bought last fall in an end-of-season closeout sale. I used it for two long trips-a 4000-mile odyssey though Quebec, twoup with my wife Barbara (see, “New France at Long Last,” this issue), and a 2000mile loop through Kentucky. Barb and I also took it on weekend jaunts, and just returned from an early fall ride to exotic Trempealeau, Wisconsin, on the Mississippi River, with our friends Marilyn and Randy Wade.
They rode their 1998 Honda VFR800, looking all hard-core and sporty with soft bags and a snarling exhaust canister affixed, while we, by comparison, looked like Samsonite representatives, with posh hard bags and a borrowed top box.
Sometimes it’s best not to look too closely at your reflection in the department store window. This bike is far removed from our old Norton Commando, funk-wise. On the other hand, it doesn’t blow up.
In addition to those road trips, the Beemer ran scores of short errands, guitar-shop inspection trips into the city and sportbike rides with friends on weekends when the weather was so cold and/or rainy that my Ducati ST4S stayed huddled in the garage, wishing for heated grips and a bigger fairing.
So the miles piled up, and at an exponentially higher rate than they did on my Ducati or Suzuki DR650. Why?
Well, the big gray Beemer has a lot of what I call “golf cart factor,” a trait it shares with the Harley Road King I used to own. It’s easy and undemanding to use. You can just jump right on the thing, hit the button and go. No need for racing leathers, dashing neck scarves or gloves with carbon-fiber knuckles; you just go as you are, because the wind doesn’t rip at your jacket, your feet are tucked warmly behind the cylinders and no one cares what you look like anyway. We aren’t swashbuckling here; we’re just picking up bolts at the hardware store.
No need to check the weather first, either. Your entire raingear selection lives in the handy saddlebags, and the heated grips await your instructions. The electrically adjustable windscreen keeps most of the rain-and cold-out of your lap. Essentially, the RT is a great riding season extender, pre-empting car use on both sides of summer.
But before I portray this bike as some sort of utility drone, I should also point out that it’s one of the best handling bikes I’ve ever owned. Suspension damping is superb, the Telelever’s lack of dive under braking spoils you, and the wide handlebars allow you to flick this big baby through switchbacks like a big dirtbike. It has nowhere near the charisma or heady engine punch of my Ducati, but I often find myself riding it just about as fast on a backroad. It steers nice.
It’s also one of the last bikes out there with an easy valve adjust and oil change for the home mechanic. Looks good, too, I think.
But it’s a BMW, of course, so not everything is perfect. I’ve always secretly believed that BMW has a special Irritant Committee within its factory walls. The engineers produce a near-perfect bike, then turn it over to these guys for modification:
“Hans, your job is to make sure the turnsignal switches are really odd, so our customers will accidentally signal a left turn when they need the horn. Fritz, you design an electrically boosted, integrated braking system that will drive everyone nuts with its whirring noises or lack of power when the ignition switch is off. Put a “Brake Failure” light on the instrument panel that flashes every time the bike is started. Also, install a seat no one can sit on for long. Karl, your job is to put a big gap between fifth gear and the overdrive sixth.”
There, I guess I’ve tipped my hand on what I perceive to be the bike’s shortcomings. BMW has fixed most of these things on the new R1200RT, incidentally, but the old one leaves you wondering. Did BMW not notice that virtually every owner throws the seat away on an older RT? And who, pray tell, signed off on that brake system?
In all fairness, the brakes really work on this bike. The RT hauled us down ferociously from 90 mph to about 50 in one nanosecond when a semi suddenly changed lanes on us near Montreal, and the ABS was mighty nice on the gravelly backroads of New England. The brakes are safe and effective, but still odd and short on feel.
Gearing? The “overdrive” sixth is too tall for most backroads, and fifth is too short, revving the engine into its thrumming and thrashing mode (this has also been fixed on the new RT). At highway cruising speeds, though, all is glassy. The engine note-an uninspiring mixture of whirr and flutter-never threatens to stir the blood, but is quiet and unobtrusive.
So after one summer and all those miles, the big Beemer’s appeal remains mixed and enigmatic. It might be the best motorcycle I’ve ever owned, yet it inspires more admiration than passion. Sitting next to it in my garage is the Ducati, which I profess to love more but ride about one fourth as often. Just one of life’s several mysteries.
In about an hour I have to ride into the city for our Tuesday night Slimey Crud meeting. It’s a glorious late autumn evening right now, but the temperature is supposed to drop into the high 40s tonight. I guess I’ll take the BMW. Turn on the heated grips, crank up the windscreen and watch the moon rise.
It’s not a hot date, but it’s a pleasantly warm and friendly date. Loyal, too. In all those miles, all summer, it never missed a beat.
