Sleepless in Achberg

Too many great motorcycles to choose from while seeking to refine my search criteria

I love motorcycles. I can look at almost any motorcycle ever made and think “Now that’d be fun to have.” And there’s been a huge crop of bikes in the last few years that appeal to me. There are dozens of bikes I would buy if money and parking space were not an issue. Hell, in my fantasy garage, I’d have one of each. One in each color. The hard part for me is picking just one. It’s not parting with the money that makes me sweat, it’s the finality of the decision. Buying any one particular bike means I’m not picking one of the others I like. My airline pilot buddy Sabo assures me this is normal. Says he has the same problem whenever there’s more than one available girl at a party.

Living in California, it was frustrating for me to read the British magazines and see all the models that didn’t come to the US over the years. While the range of imports is getting better in America, there have always been more choices on the east side of the Atlantic. We Yanks missed out on many models that you probably take for granted if you live in Europe. We didn’t get the Yamaha Ténéré, Super Ténéré, TDM 900, Bulldog, or the new MT-01. Nor the Honda Deauville, Transalp 650, Africa Twin or Varadero. No big retros like the XJR1300, CB1300 or GSX1400. No FJR1300 the first two years. That’s just to name a few. Yes, we got the VFR, Firestorm and Blackbird, thank you, but only in one color. (Always the wrong one, you ask me.) Bottom line, Americans vote with their wallets, and they vote for fast sportsbikes and big cruisers, and not much in between.

At 6’2” and 200 lbs, my personal criteria for a bike are pretty straightforward: it shouldn’t kill my back, cramp my legs, require a tailwind to break the ton, or, for that matter, be able to break it in first gear (gets me in trouble). I appreciate, but don’t require, goodies like shaft drive and ABS, and I like a modicum of weather protection. Plus – and this is crucial – I’ve got to love its looks. I mean, what good is having a bike if you can’t pop a beer after a ride and just stand back and admire it? What kind of spanner-up-the-tailpipe pragmatist shells out good money for a bike only because it works well? I want a bike that wrenches my head around to gawp at it even after I rode it to the café up on the mountain.

Some bikes everyone says are wonderful just don’t float my boat, like the Z-750, the Caponord, or the Bandit 1200. Respect them I do, I’ve just never fallen for their looks. I can just hear all the shouting, “If you rode one for awhile you’d come to love it!” Sorry, I just don’t feel like I’m supposed to be in that kind of relationship. Can’t we just be friends?

Others, I love the looks, but know better than put myself through the torture. Race replicas thrill my heart but they are meant to be ridden at extreme velocities. Fact is, I hate being on top of a supersonic fighter while having to ride at traffic-pattern airspeeds in order to preserve my license. I’d rather be wringing the living daylights out of a 650 single than using ten percent of the warp-factor-seven available on some race-bred hyperbike. Also, I’m too old and pragmatic to think I’ll be happy in the long term with aching wrists, back and neck just for the sake of a few well-strafed apexes. After an hour’s riding I’d be singing “The Thrill is Gone.”

I’ve really taken to the bikes being classified as “Giant Trailies” or “Adventure Tourers.” I prefer to think of them as rational sports-tourers. Comfortable one- or two-up, good for dawdling and sightseeing but well able to pick up the pace on demand, they’re some of the best all-rounders on the pavement. Me go off-roading or round-the-world? No thanks. Not my goal. Besides, ever since I saw some nut in Austria successfully take his Fireblade off-roading on a dirt road over the Alps (‘s true!), I no longer see long-travel suspension as a requirement for that duty. Just determination.

Truth be known, in the past decade I’ve owned just three bikes. There was a ’93 FJ1200ABS that I bought new in ’95, but finally had to sell in 2000 due to wrist problems – I couldn’t keep myself from going twice the 65 mph speed limit on my San Diego commute every day. I never did get a ticket – knock wood – but if I had, it would have said Go Directly To Jail.

To rein myself in a little, and to gain a more comfortable riding position, I sold the FJ and bought a Cagiva Gran Canyon, even while Cagiva’s future – or existence, for that matter – was tenuous at best. I had heaps of fun on the Cagiva, and the highest speed I eked out was a meager 118 indicated. Speed problem sorted. The grunty Ducati two-valver and the lofty perch taught me something else, too: that it’s fun to potter along looking at the scenery once in a while, not just try to straighten out every bit of twisted pavement at maximum velocity.

In 2002 my wife and I made our plan to move to Europe, and in order to do some serious touring before we left, sold the Gran Canyon and bought a BMW R1150RT. For the next two years the RT proved a capable tourer, commuter, and even a decent sports-tourer, albeit a large one. I never thought of myself as a Beemer type of guy, but once I had the switchgear sorted out (i.e., once I stopped flashing a menacing left blinker at inattentive drivers and honking the horn to cancel said blinker), I found myself rightly impressed with the absence of dive from the telelever front end and the massive grab of the servo-assisted brakes. Got spoiled by the shaft-drive, too.

In May 2004 my wife and I finally moved out of southern California and settled near her hometown in southern Germany, a few minutes from Lake Constance. Southern California is home to some of the greatest motorcycling roads in the world and has phenomenal year-round riding weather, but where driving is concerned it really is the world’s largest open-air insane asylum. For a daily rider, the worst part are the full-combat conditions of the freeways, where those drivers not vacantly chatting on the phone go speeding maniacally across any and all lanes. Blinkers are a sign of weakness, and the weak are fallen upon and devoured. It’s the real life Fast and the Furious, starring over-caffienated soccer moms in gigantic SUVs and super-charged gang-bangers in sports coupes trying to outmaneuver the realtor who’s late to his anger management class. Sometimes actual gunfire erupts.

Starting in 1995 I’d travelled to Germany on holiday seven times and had rented or borrowed about a dozen bikes for anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. I’d come to relish European riding, what with the better disciplined and motorcycle-friendly drivers. I was stunned by the huge number of bikes on the roads in the summer, and how many of those models I’d never seen stateside. After a few excursions over the Passos I started dreaming about swapping year-round riding in crazy SoCal for riding in the Alps all summer, and I struck a deal with my wife: We’ll move to Germany, and I get to buy whatever bike I want. (Within reason. No Morbidelli V8, for example.) I started poring over the magazines and catalogs, getting heart palpitations every time I did because there would be so many more options in Europe, and I would have to pick only one.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the motorcycle show in Friedrichshafen, Germany. This is a relatively minor bike show wherein the area dealers – not the manufacturers themselves – display the latest bikes. The show was a bit of a disappointment because there were some brands completely without representation, like Moto Guzzi. But overall it was a fun show (what bike show isn’t?) and I spent all three days of the show in full shopping mode. I really wanted to leave knowing which set of wheels will be parked up in my shed once the riding season begins. But by Saturday night I’d blown all my fuses going over and over all the choices, and I found myself lying awake at midnight, unable to sleep. Too many choices – what a laughable problem. But with only one parking place in the garage and one bike in the budget, the killer question – which one, which one? – kept me percolating till dawn.