Few days before us gearheads annual pilgrimage to Elkader for the Guzzi rally I noted my hack’d SuperTenere (S10) was doing a good job of decreasing and amplifying my throttle hand’s nervous system. A bit of diagnosis and my best guess is it’s a badly cupped Shinko dual sport front tire, and even with a few simple tweaks my right hand still reported some strange feelings an hour after a 40 mile ride. So called up this 75K mile BMW F800S out of retirement and hoped it had been cured of it’s appetite for stators thanks to BMW’s poor systems integration of this bike’s Aprilia designed and Rotax powered parts of them.
Not only was I testing this 15 year old bike, I was testing my 72 year old self- I’ve been riding hack’d (with sidecar) 99% of my miles the last 7 years. I can still balance a 2 wheeled bike well enough in motion, but taxying, take offs, and landings can be a challenge even with this bikes under 500 pound weight. But did the numbers on the fuel cost for this 600 mile round trip- figured $90 for the hack’d S10 and $50 for the F800S and the solo bike won! So kluged on the generic tank bag that replaced the better fitting Wolfman that was stolen when the BMW broke down again, the soft panniers bought for a Buell 20 years ago, and a dry bag across the rack for my small tent and micro cot.
Given current fuel costs maybe a few more rode instead of trailered, giving us a chance to see if the classic BMW/Guzzi model of riding and living off a motorcycle was still viable, and by and large it was.
Turned out I saved even more that expected by going solo, gas mileage was about 60 MPG and trip mileage was about 800 including our “exploring”, so I saved enough on gas to pay the $55 rally fee! My campsite neighbor Jeff with a similar F700GS had similar good results at the gas pumps. Perhaps a mid sized high MPG tour able bike like this can keep motorcycle rallies rolling? Only down side I saw was the idiot 4 wheeler who pulled in front of me in the left lane at half the limit after I’d vacated the right lane so he could merge, resulting in the F800S’ 2nd ABS activation in 75K miles… Better make that a high MPG bike with ABS!
Here’s a few more pix:
GearheadGrrrl 