Past the 7000RPM mark the 2006 K1200GT’s engine spins up with a guttural ferocity and a growling primeval engine note serving notice to whatever the posted limit is that it’s about to be thoroughly trounced.  That sound and the acceleration it represents gives the newest bike in the BMW K series some serious X-factor.  Normally…

Blame the weather; an early March dump of snow in Vancouver is near unheard of and put our regular bike testing plans on hold.  Sipping coffee and walking along the beach it was easy to eye the glistening downhill slopes of Cypress Bowl and buy into a lie that so many Vancouverites have perpetuated through…

All the hype about this new big dirt bike from BMW, the HP2, has the adventure biker set all worked up. I try not to get too excited about new bikes because I just can’t afford to, but I was really looking forward to riding the HP2. Especially since the weather was going to be…

By reason of looks alone, BMW’s R1200ST is utterly memorable. In a world of Back-Street-Boy-sportbikes clamoring to all look alike, the R1200ST’s looks are challenging. OWD uses this phrase for lack of anything stronger. The design disrupts the notion of tourer, sport-tourer and sport all in one go. The side profile is strong, the rearview…

It’s as if all the frustration and repression in the fatherland were suddenly given an outlet through this engine, and that should be terrifying.  Except this is a Beemer, so it’s not. This, the BMW K1200R, is civilized madness, a new designer drug to which you are instantly addicted.  The collection of letters and numbers read…

Looking down at the gauges I realize I’m hardly even moving the tach.  The sci-fi whine that would not be out of place on the bridge of some of the galaxy’s better appointed battle cruisers accompanies my 5,000RPM amble.  The twisties are fast approaching, and the devil takes me… And then the K1200S takes the…

Who am I to turn down the offer to ride the newest BMW offering, the ground-up reworking of the GS theme, the R1200GS.  Especially when that offer involves cavorting about the streets of San Francisco in a riot of location shots and twisty roads.  Right off the top I can tell you this; there is…

I was jazzed at the opportunity to test the new 2005 BMW R 1200 GS, but not particularly impressed by the choice of venue: Las Vegas.  I don’t really gamble and have a hard time sitting still through a stage show, though that last Siegfried and Roy show may have been interesting.  More importantly, I…

On a motorcycle we are titans, roaming a new and beautiful world, unsuspecting, innocent, and uncaring of the changes we will see, moving forward along interlaced roadways, and existing in the now of travel and motion.  Nowhere has this been truer than riding the BMW Montauk; it is the bike that has given explanation to…

I’m going to tell you a secret. I rode this bike earlier this year (2003) for the BMW test ride days, and I liked it –a lot. I know the cartoon character headlights with one eye wide and the other squinted, beak front fender, and gangly enduro styling give the bike an ungainly and odd…

After just over a year of ownership and 36,000 kms or so my K1200RS is no more due to a rather serious partially airborne incident. After riding a bike for 36,000 kms you get to know it pretty well and as part of a semi-spiritual farewell to the bike and to ward off the sheer…