I sold my BMW R1150GS a couple of years ago. I just wasn't riding it. In my last year with the bike, I did only 2,000 miles and all but 500 of those was on a trip to France with Tom. I got a pretty good price for it (around £4,000) and used some of the money to buy a couple of old classics - a 1961 Matchless G2 and a 1953 BSA C11. I fondly imagined myself pottering about the countryside at a steady, sensible pace and polishing the chromework on sunny Sundays.
Of course it hasn't worked out like that, old bikes need loads of TLC and there's always a list of jobs; jobs that I don't have time to do. I've put both of them on SORNs (statutory off-road notices) and they've both been sitting unused in the garage, slowly dripping oil onto my nice clean floor.
I've decided I need to put them into dry storage until I've retired and can spend some more time fiddling and fettling. Truth is that an old bike is bloody scary on the road. The BSA feels terrifying at 50mph, brakes are hopeless, the front forks are as soft as butter and you can see why sprung-hub technology was replaced with the swing-arm. You wouldn't want to ride them in traffic or on a busy A-road.
Anyway Tom got himself a bike last year - an old Suzuki SV650, which he picked up at a really good price and has been riding around London and to work. Ever since he got that, I've had a hankering to get a modern bike and decided that if I got a decent bonus this year, I'd spend some of it on a bike as a treat.
I didn't want another GS, but I did want a BMW - I really like the character of the bike, the engineering, design and build quality. The GS is a great bike and I've really enjoyed riding them, but thanks to Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's Long Way Round travelogue it is so common (it's been the best-selling bike in the UK for quite a few years). I'm not sure why, but I wanted to get something a little quirky. I like the 1150RS and I'd also had a quick go on an R1200ST, so I thought one or other of those would do nicely.
There are quite a few RS models around from £2,500 to £4,500 and the ST comes in at around £5-6,000. I thought I might stretch to an ST if I could get one with luggage for about five grand. I've been keeping an eye out on Autotrader and saw a mint RS, but the phone number given was "outgoing calls only" and there was no e-mail address; then I saw a nice ST with luggage and within my budget. That was a "Phonesafe" number allocated by Autotrader to prevent calls from canvassers and that number didn't work either. Two nice bikes and I couldn't make contact with either seller.
Tom suggested that I tried eBay and I found a pretty good looking ST at £4,400. I contacted the seller and arranged to go to see the bike just after Easter. He was a Canadian, living in a lovely little mews not far from Paddington station and I went round there with Tom after work. I was looking for a catch because the bike was so much cheaper than anything else I'd seen, but there didn't seem to be one.
The chap who was selling it (called Zac) was spending a lot of time working in Africa and he wasn't getting any time for the grand European tours he had planned. The bike was not the right tool for London traffic and clearly hadn't been used a great deal - it was dusty from sitting in the garage and he'd had the battery on charge. He didn't seem comfortable with the bike - moving it about, starting it, putting it on its stand - so we think he'd bought it with good intentions a year ago and hadn't ridden it much since. The clock was way out of time - an indication that the battery has been allowed to run flat and when I asked him how to zero the trip, he didn't know. He was going to look through the handbook, when I saw a button on the handlebars marked "TRIP".
Anyway, it was in good condition, no scratches or serious marks, no sign of damage through accident or dropping it and it came with two panniers, plus a rack for a top box. I pointed out that the rear tyre was squared off and I'd want to get a new tyre on, so I said I'd offer him the asking price less a new tyre - £4,250 - and he said yes without blinking. He was off to Africa the following Monday (this was Tuesday after Easter) so I left him £100 cash as a deposit and arranged to collect the bike on Friday after work and give him a banker's draft for the balance.
The week was sunshine and showers and it looked as if I might be in for a wet ride home on the day. Actually, I was lucky with the weather. I picked the bike up in bright sunshine and set off for home. The route was fairly easy - straight past Paddington station onto the Edgware Road, then up through St John's Wood and West Hampstead, across the North Circular to pick up the A1 at Hendon.
Once on the A1 I was on very familiar territory. The bike rides like the flat twins I'm used to, a little lighter than the GS and with a bit more power. Handlebars are narrower than the GS, the riding position is slightly forward and the small fairing gives good protection from wind blast without buffeting. The screen will actually raise a few inches, but I don't think I'll need to do that.
Handling was a bit strange, partly due to my being rusty on a bike and partly due to that squared-off tyre. Left handers were OK, but on right-handers, the bike didn't seem to want to turn in and then when it did, it dropped into the bend a bit fast. I will get the rear tyre sorted out in a few weeks and then it should be OK. I came back along the A1 at a decent pace - steady 80mph, with the odd blast up to 90mph. Judging by the speed of other traffic the speedo is reading about 10mph fast at 90. I was a little worried to see the fuel gauge go down so quickly - it went from full to under halfway in 90 miles, but when I filled it up this morning it took only 10 litres from a capacity of 21. If he hadn't brimmed the tank, I guess I was getting north of 45mpg on the way home, which isn't too bad considering there was 10 miles of London traffic and then 80 of high-speed cruising with panniers fitted and into a stiff headwind.
On Saturday, I went to price up a top box, but they were £350 and the BMW official box is quite small. I did buy an overall-type one-piece suit that I could get on over a work suit so I can ride to the station in the morning. I did that this morning for the first time and it seemed to work OK. Bikes park free and I'd be covering 20 miles a day rather than 40 in the car if Margaret is running me in and picking me up. That means I'm halving my fuel bills and could save up to £15 per week. It also means Margaret doesn't have to get up at 5.30am to run me into the station. She doesn't mind, she says, but it is a bit of an early start.
I cleaned the bike on Sunday (between hailstorms) and it has polished up very nice. There's a bit of surface rust on the frame and some slight corrosion to the wheel rim, but that's very minor. Now the bike is dust free and the chrome polished, it looks better than ever. Pictures will be posted soon.
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