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BMW adventure school, or bow I learned to love riding an enormous motorcycle' on slick asphalt and slicker dirt—and only got one sock wet in the process
JOHN L. STEIN
OF ALL THE ODDBALL THINGS I've done on motorcycles over the last 40 years, maybe revving a Yamaha TX500 through the bathroom at Orange County International Raceway with five people and a German shepherd aboard was the goofiest. But on a recent cold, rainy day at the BMW Performance Center in South Carolina, tiptoeing a 504-pound BMW R1200GS across a slippery wooden footbridge—with a dark, sodden creek bed below ready to swallow up anyone who made a mistake—didn't seem too far behind. The oddity wasn't the balancing act per se, because off-road riding always presents such challenges. Rather, it was the machine involved—and believe me, witnessing 13 other riders performing this and other feats of precision aboard BMW's big adventure bike was like watching the "Fantasia" hippos pirouette to the Dance of the Hours. Only without the tutus. Just as in Disney's epic, though, at the BMW Performance Center, I learned that the R1200GS can, in fact, dance.
BMW adopted its trademark opposed-Twin architecture in 1923, and despite plenty of reasons why it shouldn't work, nearly 90 years later the layout remains as indelibly linked to Bay Em Vay as the Little Brown Jug is to Michigan football. Like it or not, today the big R1200GS and R1200GS Adventure account for 35 percent of the bike division's worldwide sales and recently were updated with the addition of twin-cam heads (see pg. 58). Because of the bike's success, the Performance Center-a testing facility close to BMW's Spartanburg, South Carolina, auto factory-added a bike program in 2007 to help folks coax the maximum out of all the GS machines. Utilizing some of the automotive ride-and-handling pave ment and miscellaneous dirt areas around the facility, the courseware essentially picks up where Motorcycle Safety Foundation training leaves off. Namely, learning to precisely control the big R1200GS (and a few F800GS and G65OGS models) in accident-avoidance and off-road situations.
Though hardly training for your own personal “Long Way Round,” it is a decent starting point for those wanting to ride safer, have more fun and get more out of their machines.
Last fall, BMW invited a small group of journalists to experience GS adventure bikes in a distilled version of its $595 one-day on-road and $1095 two-day off-road programs, which include the use of a GS (go to www.bmwusa.com for more info). First were some warm-up exercises such as riding lazily around the road course, standing on the pegs and extending first one leg, and then the other, outward. Think of a yoga class rolling along at 15 mph. This was followed by riding sidesaddle, which I found easy to do on the left side of the bike but daunting on the right. It all reminded me of a silly Shriners Fourth of July parade, but I still gave myself a demerit and vowed to practice on a dirtbike.
Next up was a braking exercise, a dodgy-seeming proposition on the wet asphalt. Starting at 15 mph and working up to 40 mph, we knifed through a pair of cones and laid into the back brake hard with ABS turned off. Luckily, the big Boxers slid straight enough and proved easy to control with a bit of countersteering. Stopping distances predictably improved with the ABS enabled, and we soon advanced to the Performance Center’s preferred technique: a sudden and hard rear-brake application followed a split second later by a smooth, quick and full application of the front brake. It’s perhaps counterintuitive in the rain, but that’s what’s required to use ABS to best effect. The instructors first coaxed me to pull the front brake harder, and then to keep my eyes up. Those two elements handled, I was stopping with the best of them. But it still gave me the creeps.
So did an emergency lane-change maneuver in the wet. Starting at 20 mph and working upward to 35 mph, we were directed to make a quick left right-left (or alternately, right-left-right) jog around some cones as if avoiding a truck, flying debris or some other penance. Aside from doing this on wet pavement, what bothered me was the instructor's insistence to de clutch and attack the exercise while coasting-and with no brakes. My natural reaction is to both brake and turn, so this was another steep lad der to climb. I eventually got up to 35 mph but it wasn't easy.
One discovery is that while the R1200GS will never be a high-fly ing trailbike, neither is overcoming its mass in the dirt utterly hope less. The Telelever front suspen sion does a great job at lightening steering effort, and the Boxer engine's low cg helps improve the bike's overall flickability. The main impediment to easy handling is actually the bulky fuel tank-no small adaptive challenge for a new bie. Considering that some partici pants didn't really have much rid ing experience, it's surprising that only one rider hit the ground.
This would soon change, as part two of our training hinged on the world's second-best four-letter word: dirt. While the bikes' DOT-approved knobby tires were treated suspiciously on wet pave ment, they were greeted with broad smiles as our little flotilla single-filed its way off the pavement and onto the slick Carolina clay. Like conniving cult leaders, here our instructors led us through several exercises reminiscent more of a slow-speed rodeo than manly motorcycle training. For start ers, we had to weave through a series of cones with our weight centered on the out side peg, tipping the bike inward and then counterweighting our bodies to the outside. Soon enough, this methodical approach felt natural, and admittedly it did allow turning the motorcycle at its tightest-an essential skill as the instructors quietly moved the cones ever closer together.
The real benefit of sharp turning became apparent the moment we moved from the safety of the dirt lot into the dark, quiet woods, where a winding junket through the trees, across squishy glens and over that dastardly bridge, awaited. Using the "trials" style up-on-the-pegs technique we'd just practiced, I got through this one with no drama whatsoever, although I was extremely careful and smooth with the con trols-essential when guiding a lot of mass at slow speeds. En route, I found myself wishing they'd throw some higher speeds and really difficult tasks at us. Yet probably not everyone felt that way, as one rider fell while approaching the bridge, derailing the next person downward into the cold creek. With more than a dozen guys riding huge bikes in poor conditions, you just knew it was going to happen.
And it kept on happening when I swapped my R1200GS for another participant’s delightfully revvy F800GS parallel-Twin, and we attacked a long, narrow rut edged with slippery timbers—designed to replicate following tire tracks on some muddy equatorial road. These inescapable trenches require a clear plan and perfect balance—and they extract a price for error as one rider discovered while vaulting clear of his diving Beemer. Having spent decades trail riding, Eve always figured some combination of looking well ahead and looking down at critical moments is the right formula. Nein, said our instructors while bidding me to keep eyes up throughout. Not sure I agree entirely—this will need more study, say, on a month-long Patagonia trek!
in the We next trudged up a man icant made dirt mound to observe-but connot practice, due to time con oad straints-the art of salvaging a 71 the failed hill-climb attempt (turn the bars and roll the bike in a backward arc until it's pointing roughly 45 degrees downhill, where it's easiest to remount).
Then BMW truly saved the best for last, as a specially built sandpit taunted the talented and profoundly cursed the neo phytes. True fact, aside from the Cirque du Soleil, I'd never seen so many bodies flying simultaneously. As any dirt rider will tell you, riding through deep sand is an acquired skill requiring speed, commit ment and talent in approximately equal proportions. Come up short on any one, and you'll find yourself soaring through the wild blue, minus your motorbike. After a few easy-enough runs on the F800GS, I switched back to the R1200GS to see how this summa cum large BMW would do. To my surprise, its ample torque and knobbies helped it plow through the sand with some thing approaching grace. It proved a lot twitchier than the F800GS, though, requir ing a couple of foot dabs on the way across.
Ultimately, I found many of the day's lessons easy and a few others challenging, if not actually scary in the wet. Make of this what you will, but in my book, it places BMW'S Motorcycle Rider Training program at the crossroads between novice and expert, right where the com pany probably aims it to be. With additional off-road terrain and dedicated motorcycle facilities (instead of repurposed car facilities), the program might someday offer an even wider range of possibilities for a broader range of riders. As it is, if you're an up-and-comer looking to extend your range aboard one of BMW'S big adventure bikes, this is an excel lent place to do it.
