Had a long overdue ride with two mates, one on his new 1200GS Trophy and the other on his 800GS, these being the original culprits that convinced me to look at BMW more seriously in the first place.
Did a sort of relay run with each one picking the others up on the way as we live quite far apart, but it works so much better than the usual waiting at the garage type business.
As we entered the boring bits in Strand I pulled up next to a Kawasaki Z1000SX and initially there was just a wave and a slow cruise…until the first red light.
I think he was faking it a bit at first and testing me to see how fast the bike is because we had a little half-hearted 2nd through 4th drag and then tapered off to force the next light to go red. Then it was serious business with a hard launch and I was ahead before tapering off again for traffic.
Second time only had a short gap but I slaughtered him. I imagine without a quick shifter it might not have been so clear cut though.
Third time he was still gave and we had a long stretch and I still got away from him easily but then we started running into high speeds and I think he would have caught up but we both erred on the side of legal caution and tapered off and he just gave me a thumbs up.
Stopped and had the typical ear plug restricted chat at the next light and the first thing he said is that these big bikes aren’t nearly as slow as people say and then asked me if the RS is a 1600cc. I said not it’s “only a 1200” with a little giggle inside.
Set off to Rooi-Els via the famous R44 and I was out front and ran into sudden traffic when I expected the typical worst that someone on a bike had binned it (people tend to treat it like a public road race track on Sundays).
Fortunately, but I guess still unfortunately it had been two cars that had a head on with one ending up on it’s side across the road. Everyone seemed just fine with nobody lying down and already had enough people on the scene that I didn’t even get off the bike but just slipped through the gap and off I went.
What I didn’t consider is that the other two being a bit behind thought maybe I was the one who had cocked it up and got involved in the accident.
Anyway I broke away and had a chance to stop for a quick photo or three while they caught up.
Off we went onward to Bot River to have brunch at The Shunting Shed which is an old converted train yard. Very rustic, with good food and well priced and a great halfway house to nowhere.
I was originally planning to head back to Gordon’s Bay but they convinced me to head out towards Franschhoek pass which I usually try to avoid from having to pick up way too many people in accidents there, but not having done it with the RS yet I figured why not.
So we went around the back via Villiersdorp and across the Theewaterskloof dam which is very very empty with the drought at the moment which is quite a thing to behold.
I broke away from the offroad bikes again heading into the pass and found a Ducati Diavel in bright red having a jolly good time by himself and didn’t really put any pressure on him but just kind of tracked him at a reasonable pace until I had a real wheel lockup under braking before one of the really heavy right-handers in Dynamic Mode on everything.
Looked down and saw my tyre pressure at the rear was 3.1 and the front 2.8, so maybe that was making the traction just a little bit fidgety as I had stupidly put air into already warm tyres when we had stopped at a garage earlier.
So I cooled it down a bit but the Diavel had given up and waved me past which was nice but didn’t really mean much as I got stuck behind car traffic 2km down the line, which wasn’t all bad as the corners were over and I waited it out for the other two.
Fast forward past the boring bits through the dorp and the two GS’ came past before we headed into Hells Hoogte pass and then I was let through to do my roadbike things only for that bloody 800GS to appear in my mirror and stay there on corner entry and only only marginally disappear through corner exit. With the tyres already giving me a bit of a scare earlier I thought it best not to push it too hard and just leave my ego in check so as not to throw myself off the mountain.
All in all a great day was had with 240km covered from door to door and the bike remains an absolute pleasure. After the switch to fully synthetic oil at the 10,000km service I seem to get a consistent 4.9-5.0 l/100km now which I’m very happy with.
Naturally I fixed the tyre pressures this morning…
South African Motorcyclist 