Yes, well, the BMW GS... I had wanted a BMW since I was a little kid, only, not so much a boxer but one of their inline 4s. Then I read Ghost Rider and started reading more and more about the GS and thought I wanted to go the adventure route. I looked at V-stroms (nice bikes, but no ABS on the 1000), rode a Buell Ulysses (cool to look at, but my foot was asleep from the vibration after a 30 mile test ride and it's still just a f+++ing Harley), and the KTM Adventure (the best of them all IMO, but you can't get any farkles for them, and if I wanted two gas caps, I'd buy a '77 Shovel Head!) Finally, I just had to have a GS. Found one in Michigan and flew out to ride it back.
The first thing that struck me about the BMW upon further observation was "I paid $13,000+ for this? Used?" Coming off 25 years of Japanese bikes, the sound of a boxer at idle makes you want to run and get a broom and dustpan. It is a mechanical cacophony, to say the least. No modern bike should sound that way. Then you start to realize that the BMW is a tax bracket bike. EVERYTHING is more expensive for a beamer. Throttlemeisters are $40 more, crash bars are $100 more. For God's sake, even BMW has the unmitigated gall to charge over $300 for a f+++ing tank bag. Thankfully, mine came with one.
Then, no matter what I did to the bike, I could never get fully comfortable on it. Three different seat combinations, windshields, etc. I could do 500+ mile days, day after day, on my old FJR and feel fine afterwards. I was dead-dog beat after 300 miles on the GS. I mean wore-out. Finally, I was doing some cow-trailing on the thing, just cruising last fall. I was ripping along a dirt road and hit a mud patch. Well, apparently I already had some mud on my tires and I went into a sliding tank-slapper. I was going down on a 500+ pound adventure bike. Parts fiche was flashing before my eyes along with a four digit bill for the stuff I was about to turn into a yard sale. Just then, my left saddle bag made contact with a three-wire fence running along side the road and saved me from going down. I had an epiphany, that this was the wrong bike.
Now I'm back on a FJR and I bought a nice used 2007 KLR650 for my cow-trailing needs.
I'm not saying the BMW isn't a cool or viable bike. All I'm saying is that when I hit my knees at night, the first person I thank is Mr. Honda. Whether you're riding an FJR, C-14, or an ST, we are riding a WHOLE lot of bike for the money! As with all Japanese bikes. Great looks, locking hard bags, ABS, instrumentation galore, all standard equipment and all for under $13,000 in most cases. Do they hold their value as well, who knows? Do they have the mystique, who give a shit! All I know is, I can walk into a BMW showroom and walk out the door with an RT for $20,000 that sounds like a Coleman generator or I can spend $9500 on a nice used '07 FJR with a 1000 miles. Hmm...
