Leanings
LEANINGS
Texas roads
Peter Egan
IT WAS AN INVITATION MADE IN heaven, or at least in New Jersey. BMW's Rob Mitchell called up and asked if I would like to sample the company’s 1990 bikes on a two-day ride from San Antonio through the Hill Country of Texas.
For a person of my particular weaknesses, this was a triple-threat offer. First of all, I tend to be pretty well disposed toward that part of the country. I traveled extensively through Texas three years ago, first in a Model A Ford while doing a touring story for Road & Track, and later that summer I saw it from the air when my wife Barbara and 1 took a trip around the U.S. in our J-3 Piper Cub. On both trips, we found the friendliness and hospitality of Texans to be second to none. The whole state seems to be full of colorful, outgoing characters who will instantly drop what they are doing to help a stranger, and we made a lot of good friends. Some of them lived in the Hill Countrv J north of San Antonio, near Blanco and Luckenbach.
A second incentive to go on the BMW trip was the chance to see San Antonio. I'd missed this stop on our other trips and had heard good things about the city, its revitalized riverbank promenade and its unique TexMex blend of cultures. Also, the Alamo was there. As an American history buff. and a person who grew0 up smack dab in the middle of the first great Davy Crockett mania, I'd always wanted to see the Alamo. (I spent the entire summer of my eighth year refusing to leave the house without wearing a full set of genuine imitation fringed buckskins, a coonskin cap and a powder horn, with Old Betsy cradled in my arm.) A visit to this famous shrine was long overdue.
Third, of course, were the bikes. BMWs. I hadn't ridden the new K1 or any of the K75 series and looked forward to trying them. Also, I was thinking of trading in my unfaired. 1987 R80 for the weather protection and extra horsepower of an R 100RS. I'd seen photos of the new' bikes, and the old pearlescent white paint job on the big Boxer had been replaced with a beautiful silver-gray. I hoped to ride this new version and consider my options.
Did I say there were three good reasons for going to Texas? I forgot about the music. For reasons known only to the Muses, Texas has produced more good country, blues, and rock n’ roll than most of the other states combined. And then there’s the food. And the beer. And writers like Larry McMurtry and John Graves . . .. But enough. Time to get on the plane.
We met early on a cool, cloudy Friday morning with a hint of rain in the air. 25 journalists and BMW people, in the lobby of the famous old Fairmount Hotel in downtown San Antonio. After checking maps and fuel, we rolled out of the parking lot on every shape of new BMW. I started out on a K75RT.
Unfortunately, the R100RS I wanted to ride didn't make it very far. One of the group did a low-speed getoff in some mud and loose gravel at a freeway on-ramp construction site only about a mile from our hotel. No injuries, but a slightly tweaked bike. Oh well, more time on the K-bikes.
My favorite of these turned out to be the K75S, with the small fairing. The RT was better for fending off cold air, but the S felt compact, low. smooth and agile. It’s a friendly bike that goes quickly, steers where you w'ant it to and never intimidates.
The Kl, by contrast, strikes you immediately as a magnificent piece of work; strong, solid, long and fast. and the faster you go, the better it feels. It's a serious bike, though, and more of a handful in town and at low speeds than the K75s. Also, an afternoon in the K1 ’s saddle had my neck and shoulders crying out for a shorter reach and a taller handlebar. Like the K75S’s.
The roads themselves were excellent and lightly traveled, cresting the limestone ridges of the Hill Country, dipping down into washes (some with flash-flood warnings) and meandering in fast, sweeping curves along river beds. We rode through towns like Hondo, Medina and Centerpoint. through Comfort and Sisterdale, within waving distance of the Johnson (as in LBJ) Ranch and down the road to Luckenbach, a little village, famed in song, that became the Woodstock of country music during the Seventies. I stopped at the bar in Luckenbach in hopes that my friend Ken Morgan, who is partowner of the place, might be there. The bartender said he was back at his ranch, so I left a note to say hello.
Back in the city, I finally got to see the Alamo. The old mission/fort is now in a shaded, park-like setting, right in the middle of downtown San Antonio. Theoretically, the urban backdrop should reduce the impact of seeing it, but it doesn't. The Alamo saga is one of those stories that resist debunking; the walls and buildings stand as a simple memorial to courage and human tenacity. If you listen for them, the vibrations of the tragic battle still hang in the air, as they do at Gettysburg or Normandy.
Flying home by way of Austin (another of my favorite places), looking down at the green, rolling country and its near-empty winding roads, I felt a kind of instant nostalgia for the place. Visiting the Hill Country for only two days is a little like being let off the tour bus for one hour to see Notre Dame or the British Museum. You get back on the bus looking over your shoulder, knowing you'll be back. If not on another trip, in another life. On a motorcycle.
Possibly a silver-gray opposedTwin of some kind.
