Springtime Bike frenzy

Okay, it happens sometimes in the spring. I get the urge to think about buying a new bike.

Sometimes I get kind of impulsive about it, like last March's decision to buy a 2000 BMW R1100RTP, a former California Highway Patrol bike, with 80,000 miles on it. I bought it, got a friend to drive me 1 hour out of town to pick it up, and then sold my 1988 Yamaha XVZ1300 Venture Royale to George, our 70+ tailrider in the Twin Cities Motorcycle Club. The Venture Royale, I bought the summer before for $4000, and put about $1000 into fixing it up before deciding it was too topheavy for me to handle.

So this year, a local bike dealer had a great deal on a 2008 BMW R1200RT that was in great shape, looked like new, and had been fixed up with new tires and had all the maintenance done. It was sand beige metallic, which wasn't as sexy as the old black and white RTP. It had 16,000 miles instead of 87000. It had more horsepower, weighed less, and had a heated seat (nice touch for Minnesota). Anyway, I went so far as to look at it, line up financing, and was 12 hours away from buying it. Then I found out that they weren't going to give me any trade in value for my RTP. They said fixing it up to make it safe would cost more than they could get for it. I was crushed. I was counting on getting at least some of the $5000 I paid for it back, and now I was looking at borrowing more, which meant flying less, no new refrigerator, etc. And a friend talked me down from the precipice, and I ended up just committing to really fixing up the RTP, and getting my old green Virago up and running so I had a bike available to cover the RTP's downtime.

Long story short, I found a twin cities area independent BMW mechanic who was very highly recommended, and left my RTP with him to get it fully fixed and functional. I'm planning on a 3 day 800 mile trip in June, a 10 day 2000 mile trip in July, and maybe another trip to visit my mom in Maine in August. That plus the club stuff will put me on schedule for a 12,000 mile plus year. And I left the Virago 750 in the hands of Al, our club's favorite mechanic, for a stator replacement. I was going to do this myself last summer, but never got the time, space, and gumption up to break into the crankcase.

Now to balance flying and cycling....