Coast2Coast Episode #3 - The Bike

When I committed to taking the trip cross country I had to make a very tough decision. For the past two years I've been riding a BMW R1100S Boxer Cup Replika. It's an amazing bike and a bike that I love dearly. When I started thinking about the sort of mileages I want to do, and the other trips I'd love to take (Alaska, Key West, Sedona, Wine Country) I made the decision to trade in the Boxer Cup for a more comfortable machine.

I began to put together a list of attributes that I found favorable on a bike and began narrowing down my choices. Here they are:
- Comfort! First and foremost, the bike had to sit me upright. I just can't do big miles sitting on my wrists.
- Shaft drive. I'm done with chains, plain and simple.
- Reliability. I need a bike that can do major miles with a problem. For this reason I narrowed my bike choices down to strictly BMW "R" bikes, or BMW bikes powered by the ultra reliable boxer engine.
- Low servicing costs. I guess that pretty much leaves Ducati out of the question.
- Hard luggage
- Good handling

Here are some other preferences:
- Good wind protection
- Cruise control
- Naked (not a lot of plastic fairings)
- Big gas tank
- Off road capability

I narrowed it down to three bikes, the BMW R1200R, R1200GS Adventure, R1200RT.

Originally my preference was for the R1200R. I liked the naked look, comfort, and it can still be ridden as a sport bike on the weekend. I looked at the R1200RT, but it's not really sporty enough, and it's kind of an old guy bike. Plus it's twenty grand. Yikes.

Gwen recommended that I get the GS Adventure because of the dual sport capability. I agreed and we tried to negotiate a deal on one. But at the end of the day, it was just too expensive. It's twenty one grand. Yikes!

We finally decided that the R1200R was the bike. It had all of my "required" features and a good number of my "want" features. Plus it had a much more favorable price.

So... I'm now the proud owner of a BMW R1200R. We outfitted it with the hard panniers, top rack, soft top case, low saddle, ABS, heated grips (which I love), an after market windscreen from ZTechnik, and best of all... it has a gear selection indicator so you always know what gear you're in! That's my favorite feature! My second favorite is how the bike tells you how many miles you can travel until the tank is empty.

I'll post more about the bike later.