and then off we bolted down more long sweeping curved roads at speed...save now, Pat moved to my Duc 916, Steve stayed on Pat's glide, and I took the unexpected pleasure of riding Steve's long way arounder BMW 1200 GS bike...

instead of summing up what could be volumes of differences between his ride and mine, I'll instead give a quick one to what this bike represents...again after having watched the series "Long Way Around" I quite mistook this BMW to be a rather misguided bike that would take some serious manhandling to wrest it into corners on the pave', though it is said to do quite well on the hard packed roadways...though the later in that sentence has yet to be seen by me, nothing could be further from the truth on the former ~ this bike rode, dare I say glided, with the greatest of ease and gyroscopically flogged through the curves...it turned when I commanded it, jammed to a stop when I fisted the brake lever, and more so, went like a scalded goose even with its size when I throttled it...one could say it reshaped my thinking around what it means to ride a bike as it was unbelievably enjoyable (with or without the heated grips)...

Steve says that with nearly 8k miles on er in 9 months, it is the best handling BMW he has ridden to date...I could not agree more!!