Bmw Pacific Railroad
BMW PACIFIC RAILROAD
CW RIDING IMPRESSION
A transcontinental excursion on BMW’s new luxury-tourer Twin
JOHN BURNS
EVERY FIVE YEARS OR SO, FOR SOME UNEXPLAINABLE reason like the one that drives lemmings to run off cliffs, the urge to go on a nice, leisurely cross-country motorcycle trip hits me. I picture myself stopping in quaint villages, sipping a Coke on the front porch of some backwoods gas station with old guys in coveralls watching the sunset while bloodhounds gently gnaw a possum.
In reality, it usually hits me about Day Two that I’m way too uptight to enjoy a vacation, even a working one, and I find myself bombing along as fast as the law allows, downing Taco Supremes in one bite and worrying about all the stuff I forgot to take care of before I left. Anyhoo, when I heard about a new BMW being launched in North Carolina, I axed the Chief if I might ride it back to the Left Coast. He said okay. When I found out it was based upon the R1200C cruiser-not one of my favorites-I contemplated weaseling out.
But no sane moto-sybarite passes up a swank BMW press launch. In typical fashion, the BMW people put us up at the Biltmore Inn, which is one leafy ridge over from the opulent Biltmore Estate in Asheville. There, they hooked us up with a private tour of that impressive edifice, and fed us grapes injected with some kind of really good cheese and rolled in crushed macadamia nuts. They forced (really good) estate-bottled wine down us, treated us to breakfasts on the terrace-fresh-baked stuff and bursting-ripe blackberries-and took us for an excellent ride along the Blue Ridge Parkway and environs, followed by more wine, more cheese, more stuff on these really nice little crackers
that I have no idea what it was but good. I don’t know, frankly, if we’re not better off not knowing how the other half lives.
It’s all part of the BMW master plan, though. The new bike is called the R1200CL-that’s Cruiser Luxury, and so the Biltmore fits. It also happens to fit the little narrative I had in mind. Perusing historian Stephen Ambrose’s bestselling epic of the Transcontinental Railroad, Nothing Like It In The World, alerted me to a fact of which I was unaware, namely that modern-day Interstate 80 follows the route of the Union Pacific Railroad’s epic march westward, from Omaha, Nebraska, along the North Platte River. Hey, I’ve never ridden that route before. And it so happens that George Vanderbilt, the studious, quiet lad who built the Biltmore, did so with funds inherited from Grandpappy Cornelius “Commodore” Vanderbilt-who built the New York Central Railroad, among other things. Is that a hook or what? It all hangs together like a Wal-Mart suit so far, eh?
Everybody who claps eyes upon the CL has a rude comment dying to get out concerning its looks, so I naturally feel like it’s a reasonably handsome piece. Like all the Boxer clan, it’s a straightforward design in which you can see how everything works and why, without a lot of visual clutter.
Aft of the engine, it’s actually even airy in there amongst the frame and driveshaft. And full props to BMW spokespeople for being honest enough to admit that they built this one because cruisers accounted for 51 percent of U.S. sales in 2001-some 18 percent touring-cruisers. The average CL buyer will be 46 years old, 64 percent reside in child-free abodes, most make over $100,000 a year and will put 5300 miles on the bike over the same span, 64 percent of the time with a passenger.
Anyway, if the plan works, in a couple of years maybe they’ll trade up for one of the bikes in which BMW’s
engineers take a bit more pride-an RI 100RT or GS, perhaps? (Stay tuned, wink-wink-nudge-nudge, BMW says it has a lot of new products coming in the next couple of years. That four-cylinder is way long of tooth.)
The CL uses the same 1170cc Boxer-Twin as the C, with an improved six-speed gearbox incorporating an even taller overdrive sixth. BMW claims 61 horsepower at 5000 rpm, which equates to 54.5 bhp at the rear contact patch on the CW dyno. Naysayers at the launch concluded it wouldn’t be nearly enough to push around a 700-pound motorcycle, and on a romp around some North Carolinian backroads, it was apparent that the CL is not going to win many acceleration contests. On the other hand, the six-speed tranny makes it easy enough to keep things above the 3000-rpm torque peak-65.1 foot-pounds worth-and cruiser trappings aside, you can’t hide the fact that this is a modem Oilhead Beemer, all of which in my humble opinion handle great and are a blast to ride. A few of “the kids” at the launch thought the front end felt “vague” or whatever, but so do the front ends on all big cruisers, don’t they? Especially ones with fork-mounted fairings. Matter of fact, the CL feels way more of-a-piece heeled over in an 80-mph sweeper, in a crosswind, than anything in its class.
Fat tires at both ends put down big contact patches; trust them, keep the gas on, and the CL maintains a pretty good clip. As cruisers go, there’s awesome ground clearance. You have to be cornering at a truly brisk pace to get the floorboards to touch down, and that is smart on BMW’s part if they want people to discover, or rediscover, the joy of motorcycling-it’s totally hairball when things scrape and spark every time you go around a comer as with some of the competition. Speaking of careening ’round bends, that odd M-shaped windscreen is the cat’s nags; when you’re pitched hard over, the slanted parts of the M go parallel to the road and you look over the top instead of trying to peer through the edges of the screen. Clever.
BMW’s largess over, I got the boot from the Biltmore the next morning. I had packed a good-sized gearbag and my Canon EOS, and everything fit swell in the saddlebags and top box, with room left for a couple of BMW swag items (ComforTemp jacket, two thumbs-up).
Cruise control, who needs it? Well, about a mile after I got on the four-lane toward Atlanta, we were locked on 80ish, and about an hour later I wondered how I ever made it across the U.S. before without electronic CC.
Right wrist reveling in its non-duty, I swung the BMW’s snout northwest and aimed for Memphis, then decided Chattanooga would be a decent day’s ride. But when I got to ’Nooga, I felt fresh and deduced that Nashville was more in the direction of Kansas City, which was where I was going to visit the old family homestead. Besides, it was raining a frog-strangler, and I could find no stations on the BMW’s radio playing the famed rock of Chickamauga, so I kept rolling. (Sidenote: The BMW’s bags do not leak.)
Rustic America is even harder to find than it used to be, probably because the only people who require it are journalists like myself. Everybody else is happy with Wal-Mart and McDonalds. I got a BBQ pork sandwich at some local chain just off 1-24 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and asked the girl behind the counter if there were any cool, mstic motels (photo op) up the road in Smyrna (slightly off the beaten path).
“I grew up in Smyrna,” she said, “and couldn’t wait to make it out of there to the city.”
See? It’s all relative. Turns out there’s a new Days Inn in Smyrna, and all the fondly remembered ’50s motels are now low-income housing/crack factory outlets. Didn’t look too inviting.
Americana is still out there, though. Next morning I made it off the freeway to Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers meet. I sat next to the water watching a tugboat push a heavy barge upstream, and smoked part of a nasty cigar in Samuel Clemens’ honor. I highly recommend the Great River Road.
Who knew it was Labor Day weekend? As luck would have it, I steamed into Mom’s house in Kansas City on Friday afternoon just before traffic got bad. (What traffic?
I’m from L.A.) The fatted brisket was slain, and I have to tell you that Fast Eddy, who mans K.C. Fire Station 19 with my brother Mark, has the smoking o’ the cow down to a science. Visit www.FastEddysBBQ.com and order up an FE100 wood-pellet-fired smoker if you know what’s good for you.
Recovered from my meat hangover, it was on to Omaha, where I rejoined the railway. After years of politicking and dithering as to what the route would be and who would finance it, the Union Pacific started laying track westward from here in 1865; the Civil War’s end had left a lot of hard characters unemployed-tough guys accustomed to harsh conditions and hard work, and the occasional Indian attack wasn’t much cause for alarm, either.
Jump the Missouri River, and suddenly you’re out West. I made it from K.C. to Cheyenne, a 700-mile day, and it wasn’t even dark in Wyoming yet. Now a major hub for the UP, with its depot converted to a museum, Cheyenne saw its first rails on November 14, 1867. By the end of the day, another half-mile of track was westward beyond it. In Cheyenne, a sage of the day observed, “Men earn their money like horses and spend it like asses.”
Cheyenne is also 6000 feet above sea level, though the climb to the Rockies is so gradual you don’t really notice. Up at 4 a.m. after listening to trains mate all night across the street from my motel, a serious chill was in the air. A halfhour into it, with heated grips on high but teeth still clackin’, I remembered that my beautiful CLC (Cruiser Luxury Casserole?) comes with-get this!—a heated seat, and I even remembered how to switch it on (three-position rocker under your left thigh). Mere minutes later, my formerly frosty fundament was basking in a luxurious, upward-spreading glow that put me into a state of surprised bliss I haven’t experienced since the onset of puberty. If you buy this bike, spend the extra $500 for the CLC package, which also gets you the radio/CD player. Ahhh. And speaking of warm bulbs, whatever you think about the look of that fairing, it contains a pair of high beams as well as a pair of low beams, and gives the best illumination of any motorcycle I have ridden. Also, the fairing, windscreen and lowers work as intended, bluster-free and quiet-though the passenger’s head does get some buffeting. (I sat back there and sulked when I was mad at myself for not stopping to ask directions.)
Thirty miles west of Cheyenne, the original transcon track climbed to 8242 feet through Sherman Pass, at the time the highest railroad in the world. And just beyond that the UP had to build a huge wooden trestle-126 feet high, 700 feet long-to cross a trickle called Dale Creek with about a mile of cut rock on either side. The track’s been relocated since, the trestle tom, or blown, down, and I never did find where it used to be. I did manage to run the BMW’s tank empty at 176 miles trying, but luckily had to push the bike less than 50 yards to a very happy-to-see-you Texaco station. Generally I boycott Texaco, as my dad had a run-in with that chain about 1972, but I made an exception this time. The CL holds 4.72 gallons if Texaco’s pumps can be trusted.
Most of the time the Beemer would squeeze about 42 miles out of a gallon, and I’m talking 85-90 mph at elevation. Sixty-one horses may not be much, but the CL will run 90 mph at 4000 rpm all day easy. On the other hand, the gap from fifth gear to sixth is big, and a nice sedate 70 with a full-figured passenger might not be so hot.
The UP’s original grade, much to Brigham Young’s dismay, did not go to Salt Lake City, but turned northward through Ogden and around the top of the Great Salt Lake.
So did I. Just north of the lake, the Union Pacific hooked up with the Central Pacific at a place that came to be called Promontory Point, on May 10, 1869. Suddenly, you could get to California in days instead of months. Working replicas of the CP’s “Jupiter” engine and the UP’s famous No. 119 had steam up when I got to Promontory, so I sprang into action with my trusty Canon. Naturally, none of the slides came out except the ones of my feet.
The Transcontinental Railroad was amazing enough at the time. Now, it seems impossible that men working with handtools and wheelbarrows could do such a thing in four years. All along 1-80, you ride in the middle of the world’s biggest model railroad. One minute the track’s off to your left, the next it’s off to the right, disappears, reappears again-and there’s a train on it most of the time. 1-80, with no need to keep to a 3-percent grade, mostly plows straight ahead, up and down.
Promontory Point is a nice place to sit and think about how far, or how not far, we’ve come in 130 years. The railroad got built, the country shrunk, lots of people got rich, lots of workers didn’t get paid on time or ever-the UP’s “Credit Mobilier” financing scheme was the Enron of its day. Things change, things stay the same.
I was on fumes with about 190 showing on the tripmeter by the time I got to Montello, Nevada, where the two gas pumps said Out of Order. The nice lady in the casino, though, gave me a cold beer, rustled up some gas from the town’s private stash, and I made camp that night at a cheap motel in Elko. In the morning, the BMW hopped the Sierra Nevada in a couple of hours, checking out some of the 50 miles of snowsheds that had to be built at considerable expense when man learned the hard way how much snow falls up there. “The good news, Mr. Huntington, is that we finished blasting through the mountains. The bad news is we’re now going to have to cover most of it with a very long garage.”
Check out the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento. It’s right on the spot, next to the American River, where the Central Pacific began laying rail eastward. Contained therein are the CP’s very first steam locomotive, 10,460 pounds of tractive force, and the railway’s last behemoth, boasting 124,300 pounds.
By the time I strolled out of there in the late afternoon, I could smell the bam. Blasting straight down California’s spine on 1-5,1 made it home about 9 p.m. Let me just check my trusty atlas-looks like that was about an 850-mile last day. I was mentally fatigued, but physically feeling pretty good, ready to go a few rounds with the missus if need be.
I can’t take all the credit. BMW tried to build an American-style cruiser, but God bless ’em, they just couldn’t help making the thing a tremendous, functional road-swallower at the same time, though you might not gather that from just looking. Yes, the tank could be a little bigger, the radio thinks there are only two FM stations in L.A. and none in Bakersfield, but maybe I was pushing the wrong buttons.
Also, while the professional critics don’t care for the CL’s looks, I got tons of positive comments from commoners along my route. Even Harley riders wave at it. In France or Germany, you could get there quicker on an RT or K-bike of some kind. In America, you really couldn’t, not without risking a hefty fine and/or incarceration. (How sweet it is now that reason has again prevailed over most of the U.S. The 70and 75-mph posted limits translate to an actual 80 or 90.)
Anyway, it was an entirely beautiful, even relaxing, little vacation. Thank you CW, thank you BMW. □
