My BMW

My BMW

I've been a biker for some 40 years. Biking for me, is a life-style rather than a fad because I ride, hail, blow or snow. Talking about snow, I had snow blindness at one time whist going to a Buffalo Rally in Maseru, Lesotho several years ago. Whilst riding, the  continuously falling snow reduced my visibility so-much-so, that it eventually brought my travels to an abrupt stop. 

BMW 1100RS

I'd been riding with an open visor and snowflakes had been bombarding the pupils of my eyes for an extended period of time causing my eyeballs to freeze. I was totally unaware of what was happening to them until I starting seeing two images of everything. The vision of my left eye didn't coincide with the vision of my right eye any longer, causing me to see two distinct images, side by side though vertically displaced.  

I was forced to park my Suzuki Katana GS650G on a pavement quite close to a Mobil filling station and went to have some much needed coffee at Wimpy.  Walking to the restaurant was  a bit difficult  as I was lifting my feet way higher than I aught to because the pavements appeared much higher than they actually were and irregular and double.  

Anyway, the coffee was on the boil, I could smell it as I walked through the door and saw that virtually every patron had a steaming mug of Java in their hands. I heated my hands on my mug of coffee and transferred the warmth of my hands onto my eyes. The heat of two mugs of coffee later, corrected my vision, only to reveal that there was actually half as many people sitting there, than I saw when I arrived. 

Whist there, I socialized with several other riders who ate breakfast, sipped coffee and  told jokes. We huddled together and watched the voluminousness torrents of snow fall whilst I related my story of my snow blindness. Everyone was chuffed that they didn't have to experience it themselves, and understood the symptoms they needed to watch out for. We did whatever we could to circumvent freezing, even closing the doors of the establishment as the howling winds cut through of  riding gear. 

Eventually when it stopped snowing we all went outside and everything was white. I knew where my bike was parked but just saw a huge pile snow in its vicinity.  Using a stick and prodding the heaps of snow, I eventually found my bike but the cops stopped us from continuing our journey. 

They declared the road unsafe, as the road surface had frozen leaving a visible layer of ice. They blocked off the road waiting for the 18 wheeler pantechnicon trucks  to pass through expecting their weight to breakup the ice.  About half hour later the road was clear and we were on our way en mass.

I started out with a Honda Hawk CB400 twin which gave me several years of riding pleasure but its tank was just too small for a road-trip. I then progressed to the Suzuki Katana GS650G shaft drive. This was really a mean machine. It could do 420km per tank of fuel provided I stayed below 4500 rpm if I didn't I only got 270km per tank. 

Then I bought a second Suzuki Katana GS650G and was infatuated with this bike. It had going power, stopping power with a short wheelbase that allowed me to corner as speeds faster than bikes like the Honda 1100R with a longer wheel base. Along curvy roads of the mountain passes, I  made riders with bigger bikes look silly. 

In fact I was the very first person who owned a Suzuki Katana GS650G in Cape Town because when it was removed from its shipping crate, I stood alongside with the can of oil in my hands to fill it. Nobody at the Buffalo rally ever saw a Suzuki Katana GS650G before, though many may have seen pictures of it and perhaps the other Katanas in the Suzuki stable, namely the GSX 750 Katana and th GSX 1100 Katana. 

The Suzuki GS650G was the first of its kind to be released. My understanding was that there was trouble in the BMW stables at the time and several of their designers left to join Suzuki. The resultant Suzuki design was the GS650G, with shaft drive. I could swear it was a rebadged BMW. I traveled with my Katana from Cape Town to Windhoek, to Port Elizabeth, to Durban, to Beira and so many more places in between.

My Suzuki Katana G650G wetted my appetite for a BMW with its boxer motor and tourer styled fairing and large volume paniers. Not to mention the translever and paralever suspensions, its low rev engine and its shaft drive. Features and technology just too appealing on a bike, just to pass it off as if it didn't exist. I just had to get one, even though BMW bikes were expensive and out of my budget range. I was going to get one, come hail, blow or snow. 

My first BMW was a naked bike, the R1100R with a large  fairing. She was a Police bike that I bought on an auction. She was complete but had a police communications setup in place of the pillion seat with one of its injectors removed and had no battery.  After fitting a battery and a new injector, I tried starting her but to no avail. It turned out to be the submersible fuel pump situated inside the tank that head given up the ghost. 

More money that I didn't have, considering the cost of that pump. I actually figured the pump probably has precious metal inside for that price. My R1100R then stood idle for more than a year, not that I had lost interest but because my daughter suffered kidney failure and needed dialysis which is pretty darn expensive. However, she subsequently died, God bless her young soul. My BMW R1100R was slowly dying as well. 

The rust started and the tyres needed replacement because there is no way I was going to ride with then after standing for so long. I then thought it best to invest in another BMW and fix my R1100R at my leisure. So I bought a BMW R1100RS which is the 75th Anniversary model Limited edition. The successive blogs will cover repair and maintenance of these two machines. And perhaps other bikes .....

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75th Anniversary model Limited edition, BMW bike, BMW R series. Suzuki Katana, 

BMW R1100R, BMW R1100RS, boxer motor, GS650G, My BMW, naked bike, 

R1100R, R1100RS, Series R, 

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