“Run! It’s the Apocalypse Cow. Horizontally opposed twin udders of flaming destruction! Laser blast foglight eyes! Angry cartoon headlights! Grazing on the carcasses of defeated sportbikes in corners.”

Worldwide BMW has engineered a moto-media furor over the upcoming F800GS, a bike that is flying off virtual showroom floors with a popularity matching air, or water, or coffee. In that hubbub the F800GS’s sibling, the F650GS, has been all but forgotten in the media’s glare. The thing is this unpretentious offering could be BMW’s main event.

Almost every bike has a one defining element, something that differentiates it in a crowded market place. Occasionally that’s luscious looks, cosseting comfort, prodigious power, outstanding handling (okay, I ran out of alliteration there); with the BMW R1200R you only have to dig as deep as that first good pull of the throttle. There it…

Thrrrazzziiinnnn! The engine spins up, the tach sweeping past 7000-red.  What a subtle thing motorcycle design must be?  Snic-klink – another clutch-less upshift then back on the throttle.  It’s the same chassis, the same engine, just a bit softer suspension, flat bars, some fairing and a taller windscreen…  Preload the shift lever, hit red line,…

Watching the Dakar Rally I know the special gene that urges a man to self-flagellate across a desert for a month is missing in me. I respect these, and other, skilled dirt riders in a way reserved for potentially dangerous asylum escapees, because they inevitably suggest “locking the rear tire”, “giving it more throttle” or…

Hurtling through a serpentine of canyons on British Columbia’s Crow’s Nest Highway, I’m shocked. The BMW F800S I’d discounted as having an accountant’s soft, sensible and conservative soul, and I are in the groove – smoothly entering the corners, snapping the throttle open at the apex, feeling the rear suspension squat a bit and the…

I wonder what’s up that road?  It’s rutted, rocked and the soil looks loamy with aggregate mixed in.  I’d never attempt this grade on an adventure bike, but standing tall… very tall on the pegs of BMW’s new purpose-built enduro the G650X Challenge the previously unreasonable seems within my grasp.  A twist of the throttle…

It’s 5:30AM in the morning and the BMW HP2 rocks to life.  Throwing a leg over I’m instantly confronted with the unexpected – I’m 6″2′ and man this thing is tall, I can barely flat foot it.  That’s not the only unexpected, this HP2 is shod in street rubber, a $2500.00 kit transforms the HP2…

Gingering BMW’s new R1200GS Adventure onto the gravel I realize the weight that sitting atop of 33 litres of petrochemicals carries with it, such concerns are suddenly blown apart by the explosion of touring and adventure possibilities all those litres contain.  BMW claims that at 90km/h that the new R1200GS Adventure’s massive tank will carry…

Softly, softly… that’s the way those other magazines used to describe the power delivery of the old BMW R1100S.  It wasn’t so much that the power/torque figures were bad, it’s just that the bike was a little lardy, and, come to think of it, maybe just a smidge underpowered for this modern age. So, is…

Second gear coming out of the corner and I hit the throttle; the motor torques past 7000RPM and needle and front wheel go skyward.  That comes as a shock.  The front end comes down and we’re off with a rotty twin-meets-diesel growl like no other license-pummeling, tire immolating sportbike.  To coin a phrase, this is…