A BMW S1000XR Goes The Distance

If there’s anything good about delusional thinking, I guess it’s this: If you’re capable of it at all, you’re pretty much capable of it forever. My delusion was that someone would stuff an untamed liter-class sportbike engine into a largish frame that still looks sort of sport bikeish and fit it with enough useful electronics to make it good for long-distance touring. Not a sport tourer in name only, but a big sport bike that can tour. Oh, and while I’m out here on the lunatic fringe, how about making it suitable for two-up riding? Not just the canyons, but states and continents.

When I first clapped eyes on editor Marc Cook's long-term BMW S1000XR last summer, it appeared that in a moment of weakness, the guys in Munich shared my delusion because there, writ in metal, plastic and rubber, was my precise design brief. Just to confirm the reality, I took a brief trial ride and a month later, I bought one. Since then, my wife and I have toured about 8,000 miles on the XR, including a recent 3,300-miler from California to Washington on Cook's very same long termer.

I'm a sometime Motorcyclist contributor but my day job is writing about airplanes, which is how Cook and I know each other. Last spring, I had reporting and shooting assignments to do on the West Coast, so I figured the S1000XR would be as good a way as any to get from A to B. In retrospect, given the mileage, which I never added up pre-trip, I'll confess to some blind optimism. That's a lot of miles in nine days and although we had done two big tours on my XR, including a couple of 600-mile-plus days, a nine-day tour on a must-do schedule is another thing entirely. That would be—and was—the acid test of the silly notion that a bike like this could do what I wished without the people riding it melting into a puddle of muscle-kinked fatigue.

Val and I have been touring together for 40-plus years and by necessity, have been light packers. Now we're verging on hyperlight. She easily gets all her stuff into half of one of the XR's stock bags and the rest is consumed with rain gear and the minimal cold weather layers for spring in California. I also carry some tools and my photo/video gear for the work days. The long-termer had bags identical to my bike; stock BMW bags with a Givi B37 and an SW-Motech City tank bag. Without the video gear, I could forgo the tank bag, but it was a must on this trip. For every tour, weeks ahead of departure, I test pack everything and nibble away at stuff I can do without. I can honestly say that we now rarely carry things we don't need and use, but we occasionally don't have things we could use. That's what Wal-Mart is for.

Our route took us out of the LA area north on the 5 to Frazier Park and Routes 33/166/58, a favorite for reaching the Bay area without dying of boredom. And we didn’t, both because the road is interesting and because despite the California drought, it poured sheets of rain, with light hail and lightning. I’d been in the rain on the XR before, a full night of it in a nasty Nor’easter on the Carolina coast. And although the XR has adequate weather protection, it’s not exceptional.

The fairing has no lowers and in heavy rain, misting from the front wheel is noticeable. At my height, 5-foot-8, the airflow over the windshield in either the raised or lowered position creates a turbulence-free flow that keeps the helmet visor clear of beaded water. I prefer that over hiding behind a higher windshield or being cupped in a pocket of air trapped behind a larger fairing. Here a compromise; the pillion has it a little windier. No problem on secondary roads or freeways below 70 mph. Above 85 or 90, the passenger gets vigorous helmet buffeting and if you think a bike like the XR doesn’t munch quite a few miles at 90-plus, you’re more delusional than I. Grip heaters and hand protectors, by the way, aren’t sport bike staples but the XR has both. The heaters are especially desirable in the rain not so much for the actual warmth, but for the morale lifting effect of warm hands.

Like many bikes of its ilk, the XR has settable modes for traction control intervention, including a rain mode. I tried it. Once. I thought the throttle response was too numb and I’m not sure who it’s supposed to protect, since anyone with enough experience to manage a bike like this will have long ago learned how to control the right wrist. It’s that little slice of protection in the upper regions of the traction control envelope that most of us will benefit from, so I leave it in Dynamic Pro. Whether wet or dry, two up or solo, the XR sticks to the road like glue, with no handling funnies that I’ve been able to uncover. Well, one. Fully loaded with a topcase, the XR tends to be wobbly at low speed, encouraging a pilot-induced oscillation when approaching a stop. Deft rear braking tames it.

Los Angeles to San Francisco is under 400 miles via the freeways, but for us it was 500 in about 10 hours. We sometimes stop a lot when the schedule isn't too tight and here another compromise a heavier barge like the R1200RT or even our previous Yamaha FJR1300 doesn't suffer. The XR is not at all easy to mount because of its exceptional height, especially for the rear passenger, who will be a bit crowded by the topcase, at least if it's a Givi mounted in the stock position. Solo, I find this to be no issue, but two up, there's not much space for the pillion to mount with the rider already seated. So what we finally worked out was for Val to mount first, scoot back and then I'd mount. It's none too graceful looking, but it works for us. Tip: Get the SW-Motech kickstand foot enlarger. It reduces the bike's lean angle on the stand and makes it much easier to get upright, plus it's more stable on iffy parking surfaces.

Since I bought my XR, BMW has introduced a factory lowered version, which I take to mean they acknowledge the earth isn’t stalked by 7-foot giants. There’s also a set of lowering links, but I’m not sure I want either of these options. Frankly, I’d worry about disrupting the bike’s superb suspension harmony.

All tours are a mix of burning time on twisty roads and have-to-get-there plods down the slab. We had two plods, both on Interstate 5, one northbound and one southbound. Here, the XR is a mixed bag. It's not nor will it ever be the smooth-as-glass ride of something like the K1600GTL or maybe a Concours. It's more nervous, high-strung, and insistent at highway speeds and like a lot of sport bikes, you sometimes think it ought to have a seventh gear. Much has been written about the bar buzz excited by a four-cylinder engine that lacks crankshaft counterbalancing. The buzz is easily damped by heavier bar end weights—I have the HVMP 10.3-ounce weights, but there are others to choose from. (Cook is currently running the Suburban Machinery models meant for the hand guards.) The buzz is still there if I look for it, but I don't because I didn't buy the XR to be an old man's ride, even if I am one. On this bike, I never find myself thinking, "gee, I wish it were just a little more relaxed." When I do get to that point, Cook has a signed agreement allowing him to just shoot me.

And that gets me to passing. We did a lot of two-lane blacktop, especially through central Oregon, where there’s pretty much nothing else. Lots of slow tractor-trailers, horse rigs, and SUVs. In a way, it’s cruiser hell because we encountered a few bottled up for lack of the juice to pass two or three cars and a truck in one swoop. So sorry. The XR sure does. If I had a problem with it, it would be resisting the urge to finish the pass somewhere north of 120, just because I could. For now, I won’t admit to anything.

For flatlanders east of the Mississippi, Oregon is imagined as trackless conifer forest dotted with charming little villages. Central Oregon, then, is quite a surprise in that it’s rolling altiplano dotted with nothing, least of all gas stations. Here we bumped up against two limitations of hyperlight touring—fuel for the bike and fuel for the people. With the trip counter passing about 40 miles, I passed a sign that said no gas for 100 miles. I could have made it, albeit on reserve, which is to say with 5.3 gallons, the bike is a little short legged; more sport than sport tourer. We turned back and refueled, something I wouldn’t have had to do on my FJR or Sprint.

And if there’s no gas, there may also be no water and I never like to be without water on a tour. Period. Too many innocent day trips turn into survival struggles because people overlook the simple requirement to stay hydrated. We tend to assume the motorcycle will ride us right through this hostile terrain without considering what we’ll do if it doesn’t. For this stage of the trip, a half-gallon would have been ok, plus a few protein bars. We had a couple of pints because that’s all there was room for. I’d hardly consider it ideal. We ran into a similar constraint on the totally fabulous Route 96 from extreme northern California back to the Pacific Coast Highway.

Big distance touring on a light motorcycle is not just an exercise in compromises, it is essentially a compromise. I have always been a light motorcycle guy and when the empty weight tips toward the mid-500 pound mark, I’m reaching my limit of interest. In northern Oregon, straddling the Washington border, stands one of the largest wind farms in the world, Shepherds Flat. They put it there for a reason and we discovered it just before crossing the state line in a 25-mph quartering gale. When we negotiated the canyons down to the Columbia River basin, the venturi effect made me long for a motorcycle with 200 more pounds than the XR’s 504. It was a miserable 30 minutes.

In this way, the limitations of the machine shape the color of the ride. There may be certain routes or roads or schedules that a bike with a 140-mile range simply can’t do comfortably. Or perhaps the seats aren’t 10-hour comfortable or the bags won’t fit your coffee maker. Just as riders of different disciplines identify themselves with different uniforms—leather chaps vs. armored textile—so to do modern motorcycles allow us to be who we always wanted to be. No one would mistake me for Dani Pedrosa, but I identify with spirited sport riding as an aspiration. The XR—and other bikes like it, to be fair—allow that choice, even if you have to eschew the option of a fat ass cruiser seat or the portable coffee maker. Stopping a Starbucks solves both those problems, I have discovered.