A Brief History of My Motorcycles, Part 1: The Starter Bikes

          Me, circa 1977

I won’t bother counting as 'motorcycles' the first motorized two-wheelers I rode.

The first was a hand-me-down Puch Maxi moped I got from my brother when I was 15 when he’d moved up to having an actual car. Likewise, I rode it until I got my own first car at 17. 

The second one was my girlfriend’s Honda C90 3-speed step-thru scooter that I rode for about a year when I was 18.

So excusing those underpowered laughingstocks, my first ‘real motorcycle' was a 1982 banana-seat Suzuki GS450L, which I got in 1988 when I was 25. It was a silly little learner’s machine so uncool that other motorcyclists averted their eyes out of embarrassment for me. 

My neighbor Larry sold it to me for nearly nothing, quickly and at night. The poor thing had already had a hard life before falling into my incompetent hands – it was sagging, rusting, and leaking. It needed a new chain, a tune up, new tires, brakes, some electrical fixes, and the registration was way out of date. But for all that, it was my first machine with a clutch and I rode it proudly, knowing that I had finally graduated to ‘real motorbikes’. You know – the kind that can be legally ridden on the freeway. For months I did nothing but fill it with gas and ride it, until I met Rex. I didn’t even have a full motorcycle license in those days, just a 90-day learner’s permit, which had expired. What’s that saying – God looks after drunks and fools? I was no longer drunk in those days, but calling me a fool would have been generous.

Rocket Rex, who rode a naked ’83 Suzuki GS1100E, helped me fix the worst squawks. He also taught me about basic maintenance, and staying alive in city traffic while I learned to ride. 

I met Rex while I was riding to a 12-step meeting that I needed at 25. He pulled alongside me at a red light on his mighty 1100, gave me a nod through the visor of his full-face Arai. (I wasn’t wearing a helmet, in accordance with California law and my stupidity at the time.) When the light turned green, he pulled away from me, and then, to my great alarm, slowed down, opened his visor and rode next to me for a few hundred yards, frowning at me. “What the fuck is wrong with your bike?” he shouted at me. “I don’t know!” I squeaked, and promptly took the next right turn to get away from the scary man on the big motorcycle.                                                                           

Rex's extremely cool 1983 Suzuki GS1100E

I took an alternate route to the meeting, and as I parked, was horrified to see the 1100 turn the corner from the other direction and come park next to me. Turned out we were going to the same meeting. He just glared at me and went inside. After the meeting, Rex walked up to me, scowling, and demanded – without a hello or what’s your name – “What are you doing this Saturday?” “Nothing.” I answered weakly. “Yes you are,” he said, pulling out a scrap of paper and writing on it. “You’re coming to my house and we’re gonna work on your bike. You need a new chain, a new front tire, and I don’t know what all.” He handed me the paper on which he’d written his address. “Be there at ten.” I was. Yes, he was scary and brusque, but that’s how Rex is, and he also turned out to be indescribably helpful, and mercifully patient with my vast ignorance of all things mechanical. Some weeks later his old housemate moved out of the half-duplex he rented, and I moved in. We went to a lot of 12-step meetings on our bikes, which made me feel as cool as his 1100 looked.

In early 1989, having never actually registered the little Suzuki, I sold it back to Larry the original owner at a loss, and replaced it with a Honda Nighthawk 650 for the compelling reason that I guy I knew was selling it. I had never heard of one until then.

Sidebar: In Europe the Nighthawk 650 was dubbed the CBX650, without the silly avian moniker. Another time that happened was with the Kawasaki GPz900, the bike made famous in the movie Top Gun, which was named the Ninja 900 for the American market. (It’s a Ninja? Really? Wow.) The silly-name-game is not only for the Americans, as evinced by Yamaha when they called their YZF600R and the YZF1000R Thundercat and Thunderace for the European market. That’s some spectacular silliness right there if you ask me. (It’s a Thunderace? Really? Wow.)

The Nighthawk was foisted on me by an old guy I knew named Lyle who’d bought it cheap from a distressed seller and wanted it out of his garage. It looked fast and it ran well, but it had a dodgy front end. The dark blue front fender didn’t match the rest of the black bike, so I guess some or all of the front end had been replaced, something I only noticed after I’d handed over the money. The front wheel had a tendency to tuck under if you took a corner sharply, which provided some exciting moments for the ol’ sphincter, but most importantly it looked cool and was considerably faster than the Suzuki in a straight line. That inline four (with self-adjusting valves!) was simply bitchen* compared to the sorry parallel twin of the Suzuki 450, and anyway, all the really cool bikes in the ‘80s were inline fours (like the Ninja 900).

* bitchen is Southern California surfer slang for amazing, fantastic, very cool. Not related to the word bitch.

Truly, now that I think about it, other than that inline four, the rest of the bike it was pretty much crap. But at the time, I prized it beyond reason. I knew nothing of decent brakes, or suspension, or how to evaluate a bike’s handling qualities.

I never left town on either of these bikes, they were purely city-runabouts. I just wanted to be – and even more, to be seen as – the kind of guy who rides a motorbike, and these were the machines that made that a reality. They were the bikes that brought me into the lifestyle, culture, and mentality of being a motorcyclist.

Rex packed up and moved to San Francisco for a job in late ’89. I sold the Honda and moved into a small rented room in some stranger’s house from an ad in the paper, and started learning to fly airplanes.

During the next five years I didn’t own a motorcycle, as I poured all my money and attention into flight training and flying. By early 1995 I’d worked my way up the aviation career ladder far enough to have rented a nice house with a big garage, and it dawned on me that I could also consider owning another bike. 

End of Part 1.

A Brief History of My Motorcycles, Part 2: The FJ1200 Era

           The FJ1200A – ‘A’ for ‘And the Real Fun Begins’

In April 1995 I went out for the first time in my life and bought a motorcycle on purpose.

I had somehow decided that I wanted a Yamaha FJ1200, a model whose popularity had long faded in the American market, and whose technology was antiquated alongside the last decade’s worth of improvements in other models. But an FJ was what I wanted, dammit, so an FJ was what I was gonna buy.

And, I finally went through the MSF rider’s training course and got my full-fledged motorcycle riding license. Legal at last.

I stopped in at a dealer who was advertising a used 7-year old FJ in my price range, but it was too junky for any serious consideration with its rusty pipes and furry cylinder heads. In the showroom, however, I found myself looking at a brand-new FJ1200A (A for ABS, actually) that had been languishing, unsold, for two years. The dealer had just acquired it at auction from Yamaha of California, after Yamaha had taken it back from another dealer who’d gone bust. The asking price was about double what I expected to spend, but with a quick call to my bank and I discovered the concept of financing, and then, for the first time in my life, at the age of 32, I bought a brand-new vehicle of any kind.

Actually, I left the dealer that day and went around asking all my friends what they would do. They all said the same thing, “BUY IT!”  It was about a week later that I did the deal and rode away on my new scary big bike.

If you’ve never had the pleasure, you owe it to yourself to do it someday, to put the first mile (or kilometer) on the clock, and to do the break-in yourself. It’s incomparably satisfying. You also get to be the one who puts the first scratch or dent in it, which is considerably less so.

I remember the first time I took the FJ on a trip out of the city limits, feeling that rush of uncertainty that means you’re about to have an adventure. I had seldom been out on the serpentine backcountry roads of San Diego County, and there are many, so I was more than a little concerned I might get lost. Fortunately, owing to my familiarity with the county’s geography from the air after hundreds of hours of flying over them on training flights (as both student and, later, instructor), I eventually found my way back, my chest swelling with the bravado of conquest. I started scoping out new riding roads and memorizing landmarks from the air during my daily flights while instructing. Every weekend ride I went a little further afield. It seems odd to me now that it didn’t occur to me to try to join a group or find experienced riders to show me around. I guess I liked the adventury feeling that I, alone, had discovered something special, something nobody else knew about because, after all, I hadn’t known about it.

Packed for travel

About three months after I bought the FJ, I loaded the Tourmaster soft luggage for a 4-day trip to San Francisco and to Monterey to watch the World Superbike Races (SBK) at the world-famous Laguna Seca racetrack with Rex. My new girlfriend (now wife) Sabine had to work on Friday morning, so she caught an afternoon commuter flight from San Diego to Santa Barbara, where I picked her up after threading my way through the dreadful traffic of Interstate 5 in Los Angeles and Highway 101 through Ventura.

Leaving Santa Barbara we rode Highway 101 up to Highway 1, the beautiful coast road that runs right along the Pacific Ocean, and stayed the night in San Luis Obispo. We rode the remainder of the amazing coast highway on Saturday, stopping often for photos and roadside attractions.

Unprepared for changing weather, but we look good!

We had poor riding equipment, amounting to jeans and leather jackets made more for fashion than for protection from the elements. At least I can say we wore gloves, and we did have matching Arai helmets. 

I had no idea what was available then in the away of good riding gear; I’d been given meager advice from the sales staff of the motorcycle shop and almost no help at all from a couple of guys I knew who rode police bikes for a living. They rode in short-sleeved shirts and stretchy polyester trousers. The only useful information they gave me was the name of a guy who custom-made deerskin gloves and jackets. I bought two pairs of gloves and a fighter-pilot style jacket. I still have them. They’ve held up quite well all these years, but they’ve no armor nor weather protection beyond being oiled leather. I still wear the jacket around the airport to look like a pilot and the gloves for driving the car in winter, but I’m considerably better equipped for all-weather riding these days with made-for-motorcycling apparel, including textile jackets and trousers, proper boots and gloves – all fully armored and Gore-Tex lined. Sabine too. We’ve also got stretchy neck tubes, active-fabric base layers, decent socks, and – a marriage preserver – a good intercom.

The difference in the July climate of California from Santa Barbara south and the central California coast from Santa Barbara north is the difference of sweltering hot and rather cool. You go from trying to let all the air flow through your clothes to trying to keep it all out. Mark Twain said, “The coldest winter I ever spent was one summer in San Francisco,” and he wasn’t even riding a motorcycle. The Pacific Ocean runs cold and deep, and it keeps the coastal air chilly and damp. Ride a motorcycle on the coast highway in porous clothing and the damp-cold goes right through to your bones. You quickly learn about wind chill factor, and tricks like stuffing the front of your girlfriend’s fashion jacket with old newspapers from the diner to block the penetrating wind.

We arrived at Rex’s house in Half Moon Bay, just south of San Francisco, mid-afternoon on Saturday, and warmed up with hot tea and homemade soup. For that afternoon’s ride, Rex lent Sabine a powder-blue ski overall to battle the cold. She looked comical, but she was quite a bit more comfortable as we explored the wilderness areas and coastal roads in the cool breezes of the Pacific.

We rode all over the mountains between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, over Woodside and La Honda and down to Pescadero, through Big Basin Redwoods, and spied on the elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Park. Sunday morning we rode down to the Laguna Seca Raceway and watched the World Superbike races. If I remember right, Anthony Gobert and Troy Corser each won a race.

Sabine proved herself to be durable and uncomplaining of discomfort, able to enjoy the adventure of motorcycle travel as well as the drama of a major racing event – a keeper. I hadn’t consciously meant for the trip to be a test of any kind, I just wanted to have a fun trip and bring her along. But by the time the trip was over, I was pretty sure I wanted to share a lifetime of adventures with her. All thanks to the FJ.

She flew back to San Diego on Monday morning, while I headed south in the stifling heat and straight-line boredom of Interstate 5 through the Central Valley.

In one section of the I-5, they were repaving the northbound lanes, while the southbound lanes had recently been repaved. I counted four CHP cars (California Highway Patrol, the state highway police) doing traffic management on the other side from me, and reckoned that there very likely were no officers left over to do speed control on the southbound lanes, and that this was my chance. New pavement. Sunny and dry. Mid-day traffic lull. No cops. The road was mine.

There wasn't nearly this much traffic when I risked it all for guts and glory

I ducked behind the windscreen and rolled open the throttle, and watched as the speedo needle swept the dial. At 145 mph there was more to come, but I held it at 145 for a minute … and then … chickened out, and dropped back down to my usual cruising speed of about 90, staring with paranoia into the mirrors, waiting for my pursuers to appear. There’s no story beyond that, no cops, crash or other drama. Just that I’d seen the fastest speed on two wheels of my life to date.

That 145 mph (233kph) stands to this day, even though I can now go as fast as I want on the German Autobahns. The FJ was simply a faster bike than anything I’ve ridden since. I haven’t eclipsed that one-time maximum, but I’m pleased to report that I do go more than 100 mph (160 kph) on the Autobahn – legally! – every week in my car, just because I can. I feel it’s my duty, for all you poor bastards who mustn’t. When I take the bike onto the Autobahn, which is rare, I generally get it up to 120 mph (200 kph), but that’s all there is on tap with the GS’s I’ve owned here. So it’s legal here for me to break my previous record, but I can’t overcome the laws of physics to do so.

We kept the FJ for five fun years of travel and adventure, exploring southern California’s many backroads, and journeying north to visit Rex every July for the SBK races. And what a golden era for SBK! We got to see both Troys (Bayliss and Corser), King Carl (Fogarty), Frankie Chili, James Toseland, Colin Edwards and Nicky Hayden, among many other famous racers of the day. Now we watch and keep up with the whole of the MotoGP season, as the TV coverage of that series is very good here, but not so good for SBK.

The FJ was not just blisteringly fast, it was astonishingly smooth. The motor’s huge power output arrived with all the commotion of an electric rheostat being turned up. The only thing that changed between a legal 65 mph and a lose-your-license-and-go-to-jail doubling of that speed was how fast the scenery went by. No vibration in the bars, no clatter from the valvetrain, no howl from the end cans. Just a little more wind noise on the helmet. After a while, you normalize to the sensations of high velocity travel, and legal speeds seem like a crawl. It’s dangerously addictive.

I worked most days at Gillespie Field in El Cajon, a city 35 minutes east of my home in coastal San Diego, and most days I rode there (in 25 minutes). I began to notice that I seemed to be having problems staying under the ton (that means 100 mph in British slang) on the 15-mile east-west length of Highway 52 that took me there. I knew that if the CHP caught me doing more than 95 – or more than 30 mph over the legal limit anywhere – they’d be likely to charge me not just with merely speeding, but with the far more serious charge of Reckless Driving, which not only would cost me a small fortune in fines, but when reported to the FAA – as it would have to be – I’d lose my Commercial Pilot’s license along with my Flight Instructor Certificate and my precious designation as an FAA Pilot Examiner, upon which I made my living. But nothing seemed to slow me down. Oh, how the male mind can rationalize the pursuit of that which it desires most – and on the FJ I wanted speed!

Fortunately, a cure was available.

ZRX1100 in Germany

In the summer of 2000, Sabine and I went to Germany for a holiday, and went motorcycling in the Alps for the first time. I found a dealer near her mom’s house who rented Aprilia and Kawasaki. I arranged to rent an Aprilia Futura sports-tourer (anyone remember the Futura?) but the rental model had been sold just before I arrived to pick it up. So instead, they sent me out on a Kawasaki ZRX-1100, which was very much like the FJ in ergonomics, performance, power, and handling. It had the unfortunate specification of the passenger footpegs being located approximately six inches below the passenger seat. Sabine said she had no problem keeping her ears warm – with her knees. Her legs went to sleep within half an hour, and we always had to stop soon after that to let her walk around a bit and get some bloodflow back in her feet. If I haven’t mentioned it, she’s 5’11” (180 cm), with a 34-inch inseam. She clearly doesn’t fit the Kawasaki design department’s idea of what a rider’s girlfriend should be shaped like. They must have been thinking of a Japanese girl. Age 11.

So after a challenging week in the Alps, we headed back to the dealer. All he could offer us as an alternative to the Zed-Rex was an Aprilia Pegaso 650, a single-cylinder enduro-style bike with 48 hp. We shrugged, sighed, and took it.

It turned out to be a blast.

Aprilia Pegaso 650 - fun, fun fun (on the right roads)

What a revelation! The sit-up-and-beg-for-a-treat seating position with knees comfortably bent at 90 degrees – well why on earth not? You can ride all day without ever getting cramps in your knees or a strain in your back muscle – you know that one I mean, that one under your right shoulder blade that connects all the way down to your wrist when you twist the throttle, the one that after a few hours makes you understand what Caesar was feeling when he said “Et tu, Brute?”

The Pegaso’s gentle motor had enough power (well, just enough) to move one or both of us up to speed and down the road in a manner befitting a motorcycle. The wide handlebar, light weight, and 19” front hoop all made for a machine far more suited to the minor farm roads that dominate the hinterlands than the bigger, heavier, and substantially overpowered ZRX. I’d been so busy being dazzled by the stunning scenery of the Alps that I hadn’t really been bothered by the shortcomings of the ZRX, but now, on the Pegaso, I felt like I’d been unshackled and allowed to come up for air. The bike was made with these little roads in mind! (A little more power wouldn’t have been a bad thing, though.)

We enjoyed our last week of our holiday, not zooming around the Alps as you might expect, but simply puttering around the farms, fields and forests of the area called the Allgäu (pronounced ‘All-Goy’), those rolling hills on the north side of the Alps where Sabine is from. And smiling. A lot. And that’s when I decided I was going to have to dump the FJ.

Nice landscape shot of the Allgäu. Click to embiggen.

End of Part 2.

A Brief History of My Motorcycles, Part 3: Goodbye Japan, Hello Europe

Arriving home in San Diego from Germany I went straight to my local Italian bike dealer, GP Motorcycles (GP stands for Geoff and Paul) to negotiate with Paul the vending of an Aprilia Pegaso 650.

My only concern was that the minimum power requirements for riding the small winding roads of the Allgäu and the Alps are quite a bit less than those needed for navigating the major freeways of Southern California, where a burst of speed can mean the difference between a long happy life and a fiery death under the wheels of an enormous SUV.

While browsing the showroom, I happened upon an oddball from the nearly-unknown (in America) Italian maker Cagiva, called the Gran Canyon. It was lipstick red and had apparently lost the d in its name. It had nearly the same ergonomics and geometry as the Pegaso, but was equipped with a Ducati 904 motor, the 90° 2-valve L-twin of the 900 monster. The Duc motor produced 73 hp and 78 Nm of torque (57 ft-lb), half again as much power as the Pegaso. A two-up test ride later, and, for the second time in my life, I purchased a brand-new motorcycle. I opted for the full set of paint-matched luggage.

I sold the FJ to an incredulous buyer who couldn’t believe his luck at finding his dream bike in such perfect condition. Remember, I’d bought it new when it was already two years old. He’d brought a bank check for the full amount I was asking, but before showing it to me, he tried to negotiate a lower price. No, I told him. You’re the first to look at it. If you don’t buy it, the next guy will because there’s no cleaner example anywhere out there. He agreed and sheepishly handed over the check. I hope he managed to keep it in equally good condition, and stay out the hands of the CHP.

Now, here’s the saving grace of the Gran Canyon: you can’t help but notice when you’re getting up over 90 mph. There’s wind blast galore, engine and exhaust noise, and hand-numbing vibrations in the bars. It was just the cure for my hyper-speed addiction. Freed from the ballistic missile that was the FJ, I could now be happy speeding like any other Californian in a cage, going 85 in the 65 zones (with one eye in the mirror), without the risk of an “endo careero” moment on the roadside in police bracelets.

Rare that I stopped by Mom's house on two wheels - she hates bikes

The Cagiva’s ergonomics were a wonder – I stopped having to take ibuprofen before during and after a day’s ride. I started to enjoy the scenery more (as it was going past slower). And it was ridiculously fun. The torquey motor made it quick – very quick – off the line. In fact, the front wheel could be brought up with little effort, something that never happened on the FJ. On the backroads it was oh-so nimble, heaps more than the FJ, whose only real claim to fame is that it was faster than an F-14 until rotation. 

Maneuverable? Holy cats – jumping on the GC after the FJ was like switching from a circular saw to sabre saw. 

The FJ made me feel good, but the Gran Canyon made me laugh out loud, often.

Unfortunately, the pillion seat was less than luxuriously appointed, and Sabine – who, as I’ve mentioned is not a small person – would become uncomfortable after an hour on the rear perch. We tried various solutions (like an Airhawk seat pad), but what it really came down to was that the two of us together were just too big to fit in front of the topbox and behind the gas tank without one or both of us feeling a bit crushed. Consequently we didn’t tour as much as I would have liked. Solo, I loved the bike. Two-up, not so much. 

A year later, the summer of 2001 saw us spending five weeks in Europe while I was between jobs, and on that trip we discovered the BMW shop just blocks from Sabine's mom’s house also had a bike rental program. We rented nearly all the models they had on offer, one after the other, including the K1200RS – which reminded us of all the flaws of the FJ – and various R1150 bikes including the R, RS, and RT models.

           

        R1150R

R1150RS

R1150RT

I liked the naked R, but it was the RT – the bike the CHP had started using that year – which Sabine liked the most. At first I thought it was too big and too heavy, but in motion it felt hardly any heavier than the R, and in action it was just as maneuverable on the backroads while at the same time offering great wind and weather protection, and, best of all, it had an extremely plush saddle, both front and back. Nearly Gold-Wing plush. And I won’t be the first to remark that the low center of gravity of the boxer motor and the amazing suspension package delivered a ride way better than you’d think it would by looking at it. Just ask the CHP.

Sabine's charming hometown of Wangen im Allgäu

Sidebar: It was on this trip that Sabine and I decided to move to Germany. It was really my decision, as after spending a month riding here I didn’t want to go home. The decision was based almost entirely on my desire to live where I could go riding in the Alps a lot, and not, as some meager minds speculated at the time, a decision Sabine thrust upon me that I grudgingly went along with. Hardly. Plus, western Europe in general and tidy southern Germany specifically is hard not to fall in love with, and I was smitten. Charming doesn’t even begin to describe this area. It reeks charm. Rolls around in it and tracks it in on the carpet. Charm spills out of every crack and cranny, wherever cracks and crannies are allowed (there are rules, of course). 

There is too little not to like about southern Germany to bother trying to put it into words. You might complain that it’s full of Germans, but even the Germans don’t get up my nose like some other nationalities I could mention. Say what you want, they bloody well behave themselves. 

We left Germany with a plan to come back permanently in about two years. That would give us time to get Sabine her dual citizenship (which would allow her easy return to the US should things not work out in Germany) and for me to get an education that I could use for employment. Specifically, a professional teaching certificate as an English teacher.

Charm galore. Click to embiggen.

German Technology Overcomes Italian Charisma

And so, once again, upon arriving home in San Diego I went to a motorcycle dealer for the third time in my life to purchase a new bike. In this case it was to the BMW dealer to negotiate the vending of one R1150RT with the idea that Sabine and I would spend our last bit of time in America aboard a proper touring bike, exploring ever further the wonders of the American west. We discussed visiting the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce National Parks in Utah, the Sequoias and the Coast Redwoods of California as possible destinations. The world was our oyster.

As it turned out, we made the next two annual trips to Laguna Seca and went on some relatively local rides, and never managed to make the big tours we'd talked about. For one thing, I was swamped with work – which meant income we would need to tide us over when the big move happened, and for another thing, the year 2003 saw a tremendous heat wave standing for months across the western states, whose high temperatures discouraged us from donning our riding gear and heading into the scalding deserts of the southwest.

Sabine and the RT in Lompoc, on the way home from Laguna Seca

We did plan a trip up the cool coast to the redwoods between San Francisco and Arcata, but when we approached my mom about dog-sitting Susie the Beagle, she reveled in her memories of having seen the mighty redwoods many decades before, and cried “Oh how I’d love to see the redwoods again before I die!” Feeling guilty about the fact that we would soon be leaving her behind when we moved to Germany – and taking her ‘granddog’ with us – we switched plans to involve two extra wheels and two extra passengers: our Volvo station wagon, plus my mom and Susie. The travel budget for the year was shot.

Back to motorcycles: The first time I took the RT to work at Gillespie Field, I swept around the rippled asphalt of the constant-radius freeway ramp at a speed which would have worried the suspension of the Cagiva, but which seemed yawningly normal on the RT. The patented BMW Paralever/Telelever suspension is like nothing you’ve experienced, unless of course you’ve experienced it. That suspension brought a whole new level of smoooooth to the riding experience. The motor was every bit as vibey and chunky as the Cagiva’s Ducati had been, but the whole of the RT’s chassis just shrugged it off and went about its merry way without the slightest hint of distress from all the torn asphalt, uneven expansion joints, Botts’ dots, potholes, and anything else the bankrupt State of California's roads cared to throw at it. 

Tip: You'll have to go at least 80 mph to get the foot peg down

Jeff Sabo borrowed the RT one day when he was in town, and came back wide-eyed about 6 hours later, saying “It’s the ultimate man-machine interface. Your neurons are linked directly to the controls. You think, and it does.” And that was 15 years ago, in terms of technology. They’ve only got better since. 

As you know, I switched to the GS when I got here, a model that was born and bred for this environment. First I bought an identically powered and suspended 2002 R1150GS, and then in March 2014 I upgraded to the the vastly improved 2011 R1200GS. Like the RT, the GS models sport the same wondrous Telelever/Paralever suspension and similar boxer motors, all delivering the amazing man-machine interface Sabo raved about. The technology behind these bikes is nothing I'd forego without a serious fight. In fact, as I often say these days, I may well have bought my last motorcycle with the R1200GS. It may be the last petrol-powered machine I own, before I switch to a solar-electric-hydrogen scooter in my 70's. Watch this space.   

The R1150RT in front of my house in San Diego, a week before I moved to Germany

And that, friends, is the history of my motorcycles. My German biking history is pretty well documented starting with the earliest of my blog posts. Thanks for reading this far. And thanks for all of you who have clicked on my blog the last years, driving my readership to more than 5600 clicks. I just recently discovered that statistic and was amazed there have been so many clicks, from as far afield as Poland and Sweden and Canada and France, not to mention lots from Germany and America. Again, many thanks!

End of Part 3, End of this Series

Kiska & Tell - Are You Adventury Enough?

Earlier this month I had the great pleasure of taking part in a focus group in a luxury hotel in the Alps, whose purpose was to give feedback to KTM as they design the next-generation adventure bikes. Wait, what? Listen, and I’ll say it slowly: Adventure bikes. Focus group. In the Alps. In a 4-star hotel. With a bunch of very adventury riders. And yes, it was every bit as cool as it sounds.

Here’s how it came to pass: The Austrian design firm Kiska, which is responsible for designing motorcycles and more for KTM, organized the focus group to ask some ‘adventure riders’ in person what they would want in the next generation of adventure bikes. They happened to find me while searching the forums on ADVRider.com, where I have posted a handful of times. For example, I posted when someone started a thread called ‘What did you name your bike?’ (Padfoot), and ‘Let’s see your 1200GS’ (photo of Padfoot). And I posted several times when some guys from Hamburg wrote in on the Germany-specific forum asking for advice riding around this area.

Kiska saw my proximate location, which is self-reported as ‘the foothills of the Bavarian Alps’, so they sent me a PM – private message – through the forum, which at first glance looked a lot like spam, what with them hinting that they might like to invite me to a hotel in the Alps for a weekend event. The first thing I thought of was one of those ‘free seminars’ which amounts to trapping the unsuspecting in a conference room until they agree to buy a timeshare condo or become vitamin distributors. Happily, this was not the case. A few emails later and a little internet snooping on my part turned up the fact that Kiska is the real deal. Really real.

Tanja from Kiska interviewed me by telephone for a half-hour about my riding activities, and somehow I must have said the right things, because an email arrived soon after, verifying their invitation for me to join ten other guys for an all-expenses-paid night on June 4th at the Hotel Enzian in the Austrian Alps, on the condition that I ride there on my adventure bike, and talk to them about riding. Oh, throw me in the briar patch!

During the phone interview, Tanja asked me several times from various angles about off-road riding – which is something I don’t so much seek out as sort of happen to do when the road I’m riding turns from pavement into a tractor path or forest passage (with no signs restricting vehicular access, as one usually finds here). I relish those occasions, but they are few and far between. The fact that it had happened to me just a couple of weeks before my Kiska interview gave me a recent anecdote to relate, but I’m no off-road enthusiast by any stretch.

Other than continuing a few km on a farm or forest path, I can count on one hand the times in the last decade I’ve managed any truly non-pavement progress: there were a couple of times on Ol’ Blue in the Italian Alps at an enduro park near Passo Croce Domini, and there were the miles of fire roads that Sabo and I rode in Washington when I visited him in 2012. That’s about it. I guess if you go back far enough, I had some dirt bike experiences in the California desert several decades ago. Anyhow, I guess I mentioned enough dirt to be invited, even if in reality I’m 99.9% an asphalt dweller.

The event kicked off at 3 pm on Saturday June 4, 2016 at the Hotel Enzian in Landeck, Austria. Things got started with a meet-and-greet, which is when I first noticed how little I could understand of the thick, rolling Austrian dialect of most of attendees. There were three German guys I could understand pretty well, and fortunately, the Kiska staff of Tanja, Anita, and Christof all spoke excellent English. Some of the other attendees did, too, and were kind enough to do so with me.

Christof (2nd from left), Anita and Tanja from Kiska Design

The Kiska team split us into two smaller groups for a round-table discussion, where we were asked a lot of questions. The first one was, ‘What does adventure mean to you?’ I promptly fielded it with the answer, ‘Adventure is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted,’ which brought a round of laughter and cheers from the other guys at my table. I can honestly say that was the last time I had a firm grasp on the conversation. After that, there was a vociferous debate about proper adventure bikes and… well, I’m not sure what all, as trying to follow impenetrable dialects at the table sank my ship of comprehension. Sorry, but input like that simply overwhelms the processing capacity of my brain’s language module. 

Round-table discussion, in a language nearly like German

After the meeting, Christof offered to lead us out on a group ride, but I, and most of the others, declined to go on the ride due to the pouring rain. Adventure is one thing, senselessness another. 

The evening dinner was another one of those German-language events which strain my abilities. Fortunately, I sat next to Christof and was able to chat a bit in English some of the time. After dinner we were herded into a small meeting room for slides and presentations from each of the attendees. We had all been asked to send over 5 photos from a memorable trip before the event; I picked that trip to visit Sabo in 2012.

As they went around the room asking the guys to explain their photos and tell the story of that trip, it became apparent I was in the company of some major badass round-the-world (RTW) adventure riders. ‘My buddy and I went to the North Cape of Norway. Twice, actually. Once in summer, and once in winter. Here are the pictures of the winter trip – 4000 kilometers on ice and snow, with temperatures down to minus 38. We wanted to see the polar lights.” Then, “My girlfriend and I rode enduros from Morocco to South Africa down the west coast of Africa. We got delayed at one border and had to wait a week for our visas, during which time the rainy season began. The roads turned to mud and swarms of mosquitos came out.” And, “Rode from Alaska to Mexico, camping all the way. Up north, the blackflies were horrible and the wolves in the forest worried me at night.” “I shipped my bike to New Zealand and spent four weeks riding around both islands. My friend injured his shoulder so I was on my own the whole first week of riding. Here I am on a glacier.” “My girlfriend and I went off-road through Romania, Bulgaria, and the Balkans.” “I rode from Germany to Baghdad.” The room was positively bristling with Adventure Riding badassery.

When my turn came, in my best low-intermediate German, I told the story of how I’d gone to the States to celebrate my 50th birthday with my best friend Jeff Sabo, the happiest man I know, who has a nice collection of adventure bikes, and we rode them all. I rode to the Pacific Ocean where the Columbia River flows into it under the Astoria Bridge 5 kilometers across, rode the Klickitat Canyon wilderness area in Washington with trees as far as the eye can see and volcanos in the background, the miles and miles of lonely gravel fire roads with no cell phone signal or help nearby if you crash. I emphasized the off-road parts of the riding, without mentioning that we managed to make it back to civilization every night for sustenance and re-hydration therapy in the pubs of Portland. Not very badass, but plenty fun, and quite memorable. At least it involved going to another continent.

Here are the pictures I showed them:

Jeff's collection of Adventure Bikes ( there are 2 more bikes you don't see)

Klickitat Wilderness Area fire roads

Pristine mountain lake, woods as far as the eye can see

Suavie Island with a view to the Willamette River

SE Washington, Mt. Adams in the background, traffic state zero

The presentations finally wrapped up around 10:30 pm and we all headed to bar for some much needed fresh air and liquid refreshment. I complimented several of my peers on their RTW achievements, and, perhaps a little too defensively, pointed out that I had, after all, moved 10,000 km from my home in southern California expressly to go motorcycling in the Alps and wallow in the camaraderie of the European moto-culture, and that every ride I take – indeed, every time I leave my house – I’m in a foreign country with a foreign culture and a foreign language. That should count as being adventury, shouldn’t it? Do I really have to suffer mosquitoes, wolves, and mud to count it an adventure? My new friends politely agreed, and changed the subject. I sulkily drank one more beer than I needed to, and headed for bed.

Don't be fooled - these guys are badass Adventure Riders

Hotel Enzian bar has various pics of bikes, & one of a helicopter. Yay helicopters!

Next morning after breakfast the Kiska crew took us one by one out to our motorbikes for a personal interview. Anita invited me to go first at 8:00, which I was happy to do so that I could get on the road and be home by lunchtime. She asked me lots of questions about how I’d customized the bike, what I want and don’t want in a bike, ergonomic preferences, the luggage system, and a lot more I don’t remember now. She also asked me to explain my riding gear – a pet topic of mine, you know – and I was happy to expound, though I’m pretty sure I didn’t make a lot of sense. I’m not good at pop quizzes. I would have given better answers if they had thought to send me the questions a week in advance.

The interview went on for the better part of an hour, at which time Anita patted my arm and said, ‘Well I think you’re an adventure rider.” Aww, shucks. Glad I qualify, Anita.

I was thanked for my participation, dismissed, and invited to take a KTM backpack as a parting gift. I scampered off to my room to pack and gear up, check out of the hotel, and load the bike. I bid everyone farewell and headed off in the rain around 9:30. I managed to forget my free backpack.

I discovered to my abundant pleasure that if you want to ride on empty roads in the Austrian Alps, go riding in pouring rain at 9:30 on a Sunday morning. All my gear is Gore-Tex lined, so the rain is hardly bothersome, and the empty roads magnificent. A sunny day with lots of traffic isn’t necessarily an improvement. Kudos to the Michelin Pilot Road 4 Trail tires that have seemingly unlimited grip in the wet.

Roadside view towards Landeck under threatening skies on Saturday

As I hoped, I was home in time for lunch, and a much needed nap as I had papa duty to take Anika to her school choir concert in the late afternoon. The choir concert was actually really fun. The school orchestra performed on half the songs, and altogether there were 220 kids in the orchestra pit and on stage. From a school of only 1100 kids, that’s quite the talent ratio. The concert was two hours long, giving me lots of time to reflect on my riding history and what the word adventure really means to me.

So, am I an Adventure Rider? I’d kinda thought I was, at least in my own way. But after thinking about it, I realized the problem isn’t with my answer, it's with the question. It’s the No True Scotsman fallacy all over again – there’s always going to be someone out there who, no matter what you do, keeps moving the goalposts. He'll say, “He’s no true Adventure Rider. A true Adventure Rider rides on knobby tires, sleeps in the dirt, and eats roadkill cooked on the hot motor,” or some such crap.

Think of all the times you’ve heard it: Real pilots fly taildraggers. Real sailors sail in salt water. Real rock guitarists use Marshall amps. Real beer drinkers drink Guinness. Real jazz fans understand Mingus. Real runners don’t quit when their knees hurt, they run through the pain. (I fail on all these tests.) Are you a real adventure rider? It sounds to me like little more than a marketing ploy to get you to buy the bike so that you can claim the title, whether or not you have adventure in your heart.

Here is Triumph selling "The Best Equipment for Real Adventurers" to the German-speaking market

I know the argument, I heard it over the weekend: to the serious RTW rider, a guy on an adventure bike that doesn’t leave the pavement is like a guy in a Land Rover that doesn’t leave the city, who simply wants to be seen as adventuresome. But that analogy fails on a crucial point: It’s not what he drives -- it’s that the city guy stays put in his comfortable world, making the same stops around the same routes. And what is the meaning of adventure, after all, if it’s not pushing outside your personal zone of comfort, of exploring the world outside your usual orbit just to discover what’s there, to see what you’ll see, to meet who you’ll meet? You don’t need an ‘Adventure Bike’ or need be an ‘Adventure Rider’ to do that. You just need to do it. Adventure comes from your heart, not your equipment.

So thanks Anita, but it’s okay with me if I’m not a real Adventure Rider in the eyes of the marketing department, or anyone else. In fact, I’m satisfied just being a rider of any kind.

Now, let’s go riding!