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I’ve been riding motorcycles for 50 years. I bought my first bike, a little Yamaha RD350 two-stroke, in 1973. I really wanted a BMW 750cc model, but my father wisely advised that, since I had no experience of riding, maybe I wouldn’t like it. Nah! But it was good advice all the same, because I discovered that you fall down a bit with your first bike—first rainy day, first wet manhole cover, first experience sliding down the road with the bike tumbling on ahead, showering sparks. But I persevered and did buy that BMW R75/5 the following year. I’ve been a fan of big, heavy, powerful motorcycles ever since. Usually in black, if I can get it.
Sometimes I go off motorcycles entirely. Sell the bike or bikes in hand and vow to drive a car forever more. At the time, it usually feels as if I have acquired too many tachyons, like the starship Enterprise—or too many near-misses and unrealized bad luck—and need to equilibrate to a less scintillating state. Once I sold my motorcycle thinking it would be not all that different, except cheaper and probably healthier, to try commuting on a bicycle. I hadn’t been on a bicycle since the sixth grade, of course. I got out in city traffic and discovered that I had zero acceleration (except what I could pump into that chain with my own two feet), zero braking power (two little rubber erasers gripping the wheel rims!), and zero mass (well, maybe twenty pounds of pipe and sprockets) under me to stabilize the ride. The bicycle lasted about a week.
Sometimes, instead of going off bikes for a couple of years, I flip the other way and own two motorcycles at once. Some people find this strange. But look, I know where in the Bible it says I can only have one woman—and she was a darn good one, too—but I don’t see where it talks about only one motorcycle. Usually, the decision is based on having a combination of engine types and riding positions. But so far with me, as with the Sith, there are only two at any one time.
Over the years, I’ve owned almost two dozen of the big motorcycles. As Col. T. E. Lawrence favored the Brough Superior marque, I favor BMWs for their reliability, good engineering, and maintenance-free shaft drives. My stable has had seventeen of the German beasts, including eight of the opposed two-cylinder, air- and oil-cooled R bikes and nine of the in-line four- or six-cylinder, water-cooled K bikes.
Sometimes I have taken an interest in Harleys. “Why?” my BMW friends ask in horror. “Well, because …” I reply. Because they are big and stable, well constructed if not exactly a modern design, and made in America. The native Harley is not all that powerful. I’ve had two of them, starting with an air-cooled Dyna in which I immediately installed the 103-cubic-inch engine, to get the power up to about 75 horses. Then I discovered the V-Rod, which has a more traditional V-twin engine—with the pistons on separate cranks, instead of sharing a single crank like an aircraft rotary engine—as well as being water cooled and fuel injected. All of this brings the V-Rod up to the output and powerband of a European motorcycle. But the Harleys have been more of a flirtation than a love affair. My heart still belongs to the blau-mit-weiss roundel. My interest in Harleys peaked with the recent purchase of a BMW R1800, a cruiser with a low center of gravity that, for me, pushed all the Harley buttons while retaining the BMW’s reliability and finish quality.
Finally, after 50 years of riding and 23 different motorcycles, most of them BMWs, I had thought to hang up my spurs—or rather, my helmet, gloves, and boots—for good. Motorcycling has provided me with good fun, a way to let off steam, an able commute vehicle, and a valuable second vehicle when parking at the condominium complex has been limited. But after a year of not owning a motorcycle and not being able to ride out on sunny days—and so feeling mopey when I think about the hills of Northern California—I decided to get back into the sport. I don‘t know how long this will last, and it doesn‘t matter. Never say never again.
BMW R1300GS Adventure (2025)
I had an earlier version of the GS (which stands for Gelände/Strasse, or “terrain/street”), an R100GS with the 1000cc engine that I bought in 1989. The new R1300 Adventure is my first and only off-road motorcycle since then. (I never ride in the dirt, but I sometimes have to deal with a dirt or gravel road or parking lot, and a heavy road bike bogs down on the slippery stuff.) This new bike is an advance on all of the previous BMW opposed twins, with a new engine that puts the transmission under the crank shaft—and hence the tallness of the bike. It also has a feature that lowers the whole thing at low speeds and at stops, so you can put your feet flat on the ground, then rises when you get up to speed again. Other features are adaptive cruise control, rear sensors that tell when a car is in your blind spot, hill start assist to hold the brake for you on an incline, and a variety of riding modes for on and off road. Yet for all its size, the bike weighs less than 600 pounds fully fueled. And it goes like scoot!
BMWs
R75/5, 1974-76
R100, 1981-84
K100RS, 1984-85
K100, 1987-95
R100GS, 1989-90
K1200RS, 2002-04
K1200R, 2006-07
K1200GT, 2007-08
K1200S, 2008-13
R1100S, 2008-09
R1200R, 2013-16
K1300S, 2014-16
K1600GT, 2016-17
R1200Rwc, 2018-19
R1250RS, 2019-20
K1600GT, 2020-21
R1250R, 2020-21
R1250RT, 2021-22
R1800 Pure, 2022-23
K1600GT, 2022-23
R1250R, 2023
Harley-Davidsons
Dyna FXD, 2008-10
V-Rod Muscle, 2011-12
Yamaha
RD350, 1973-74