Motodisiac and I went canyon riding earlier today. One of our friends joined us. For future reference his code name on this blog would be SpeedRacer as I am sure he’d get a mention or two in the future. As the name suggests he drives and rides very fast which sometimes ends up in speeding tickets. He is a very good and experienced rider though.

SpeedRacer owns a 2002 BMW R1100S. Today he was nice enough to let me demo it in the canyons. I got to ride it for approximately 10 miles on one of our canyon run stretches.

The beemer engine had a sort of electric feeling to it. What that means is I never felt there was a “hit”, it emitted exactly the same sound at 7000 rpm as it did at 3000. There was not a point during my accelerations when all of the sudden you feel “woooow, it just really took off”.

Even though its weight is almost identical to my Aprilia Futura the beemer feels much lighter possibly to a lower center of gravity. The bike felt really tight. Throttle felt tight, handling - tight, suspension tight, seat - tight and firm, definitely not a tourer seat. Another interesting observation - once you rev the engine past 5000 rpm my behind could feel a slight vibration right under it.

The good about the beemer included but was not limited to a sportier than my Futura suspension, impeccable handling in turns, really good brakes and just the all around tightness. I can’t stress it enough - the bike felt tight.

All in all the beemer turned out to be a sportier bike and I can’t say I did not enjoy the ride. It was a fun bike to ride in the canyons.  However if I were to choose between the two I’d stay loyal to my Futura.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Motorcycles, Street, Riding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.