Sleeper

Sleeper

Jeff Hughes

Glancing down at the cylinder heads hanging out and then back up at the rather cheesy windscreen reminds me of a conclusion I reached many years ago: the BMW GS series may be the ugliest motorcycle on the planet. This latest 1200cc incarnation dropped quite a few pounds on its recent predecessors and acquired a rather more svelte physique in the process. But even so that’s kind of like putting lipstick on a pig. It still begs the question of why.

Which is one reason when I fall in behind the small group of sportbikes beginning their ascent of the mountain I have little in the way of expectations. Were I on my GSX-R1000 or K1200RS I’d expect to hang with them for awhile. But a tall, lumbering dual-sport doesn’t exactly come dripping with sporting promise. And even though I’ve been mightily impressed with the road-holding skills of the BMW in the few weeks since I added it to my stable, that’s been tempered by many years of focusing almost exclusively on sport and sport-touring bikes. I long ago bought into the conventional notions of what fast is.

Life can be full of surprises.

Simply brisk at first, a subtle change of body language in the rider in front of me cues me to the change in tempo. They’ll be intent on getting knee pucks on the ground, something I in my Aerostich can’t do. Not that I’d be inclined to anyhow - not to mention how ludicrous such a thing would look on this bike. But even as the sweepers at the bottom give way to the tighter, more technical sections of this road; even as I feed in enough throttle to stay with these guys, I have to marvel at how effortlessly this bike turns, how fast it transitions, and how steadily it tracks. By the time I break off a handful of miles later I’ve come to a startling conclusion: up to the last few percentiles of what could be considered reasonable on the street, this is the easiest-to-ride-fast bike I’ve ever been on. My Gixxer would catch it in the end – and would flat smoke it on a racetrack, of course – but at the cost of a hell of a lot more effort. My KRS would never even be in the hunt.

It starts, I think, because most of us aren’t just riders – we’re also gearheads. We have become so attuned to the advances in motorcycle technology over recent years – technology which is most apparent in the sportbike category - that we’ve lost sight of the fact that motorcycles of all stripes have shared in those advances, and have for a very long time. Motorcycles today aren’t simply good. They are extraordinary. By almost any measure you can think of they exceed the capabilities of all but a tiny percentage of riders.

Which means that – on the street – our notions of what is fast are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

I should have known that. When Suzuki introduced its SV650 some years back it was originally positioned as an economical beginners bike. But its outstanding frame, responsive geometry, and jewel-like motor quickly found it a cult-like following among many much more advanced riders. It may not have looked like a sportbike, but it sure hammered a curvy road like one!

The same can be said for a lot of bikes. Bikes that because of style or age are too-soon dismissed as having any serious sporting competency. And that’s a mistake.

Up until a couple years ago, one of my buddies, Kevin Hawkins, used to trailer two bikes to track days: an 85 FZ750 and an 00 ZRX1100. Neither one exactly cutting edge. The FZ failed to arouse much interest because of its age. The ZRX because it didn’t have the sculpted bodywork and bend-over-and-grab-your-ankles posture of a proper sportbike. Yet when the early morning benchracing ended and the real sessions began Kevin was always one of fastest and smoothest riders out there. There was always a lot more interest in those two bikes at the end of the day than there was at the beginning.

Which kind of says it all. It reminds us that in a world where all the hardware is pretty damn good, it’s the rider, after all, that makes the difference. We’ve always known that, of course. But in the swoon of the latest model introductions, in the excitement engendered by the latest technological advances, we sometimes forget.

A few years ago I was coming back up the Blue Ridge Parkway after having spent several days riding down in the Smoky Mountains. It was late evening and I was running on fumes and caught in the minor urgency of trying to find gas and get the 60 miles further north to my campsite before darkness fell. I turned off the Parkway down what turned out to be one of the most crooked roads I’ve ever been on – riding the sharp, abrupt, incessant turns reminded me of nothing so much as a dog trying to bite its own tail. Halfway down the mountain I came upon two Harley riders, one a middle-aged fellow on one of Milwaukee’s newer models – for some reason this guy struck me as being an MSF instructor - the other an older, white-haired gentleman on a much older model. They laughingly waved me past after a mile or so, but not before I was treated to one of the most hilarious fireworks shows I’ve ever seen. Stereotypes be damned – those two boys were every bit as much sport riders as those of us who revel in the latest Gixxer or R1 or Ducati.

Maybe there’s a reason why the magazine is called what it is, after all.