The real purpose behind this blog is to track my travels on the Bapper. All good journeys of course have a beginning; for this road trip it began in March of ’06 when this fine ’05 R1200ST came into my possession with 17 delivery miles upon her.
Ryan was good enough to take me to Bobs to buy the machine; for me of course my enjoyment of motorcycles had started when I was much younger, and some day I will post some of the early photos on this blog.
Buying the bike was quite a change from the last time I had ridding a bike on the street, it was a DT80 and occasionally a VF750 almost a decade before.
When you buy a new bike as a part of the ride handover they are good enough to explain how nothing works right, tires are slippy, brakes may be jumpy, power may not apply consistently and I went from that to rolling around the DC Beltway at rush hour, terrifed at any moment that the machine would fall out of from.
Luckily I had Ryan behind me in the car, he must have been at least as nervous as I was, and he had the benefit of also being able to see my ass crack the whole time.
That was not the beginning of my riding, but it was the beginning of my riding this machine; at the time of writing I have something like 25K miles on her, and when I get done on this trip it will be closer to 31K
Safe travels.
Brian