the RoadRunner, a Kalahari Yellow BMW R1100GS 

Why I bought the Roadrunner

This Kalahari-yellow R1100GS is called the RoadRunner, and this favourite bird of me is painted on its tank.

This GS was once crashed and declared total-loss, but it was only the subframe which had been affected.

A few days after I had sold the Pink Panther, and had bought the Bimota Mantra, this R1100GS came in at my dealer. The owner did not want to have him back, so I adopted him.

After all, the GS is the ultimate travel bike, and far more versatile than the Mantra.

The RoadRunner happens to be a very good specimen of R11GS (they are really all different!), with lots of torque from below.

 

Why the name

It has kept his beak, but we took off the windshield. The biggest change, of course, is the RoadRunner painted on the tank.

This is not the cartoon version, but the real bird, which I saw in the wild in Texas.

The Roadrunner is the work of Klaartje.

 

The Roadrunner and me

The RoadRunner is a great GS; I even think he accelerates better than the R3B. The strange thing with GSsen is that they're all different. With this one, I relate very well.

It has already taken me (and my son Pieter, who was sometimes on the RoadRunner, and sometimes on the R3B with Ernst) to Biskaia in Northern Spain, to the Vosges in France, to the Ardeche in France, to the Toscane, to the Intermot in München and the Alps, to Bilbao in winter, to the east side of Andalucia and to the west side of Andalucia (amongst other trips ;-).

It even did some serious off-roading (no, what you see here is NOT serious) in the Picos de Europa, on road tires!

 

The Roadrunner as it ended its career

In february 2005, I decided to buy a R1200GS (there will be a page of it). I kept the Roadrunner: it had almost 300.000 km on the clock, so I would not get much for it anyway.

In July 2005, I was involved in a terrible accident, when a car hit me. The R1200GS was total-loss.

I decided not to buy a R1200GS again. I then bought the Yamaha Tricker to learn to ride again, then the Derbi Mulhacen as a step bigger, and then the Yamaha Tenere, all much lighter than the R1100GS.

 

Tried to put it for sale

I did ride on the Roadrunner several times after my accident, but my joints that have become stiffer made it so hard to climb on and off the bike that I just felt too insecure to ride on.

It was a hard decision, but an R1100GS is not made to stand still...: I decided to try sell the Roadrunner.

But the many kilometers on the clock made it impossible (I think that doesn't do BMW just: this bike could have ridden on for a couple of 100.000 kilometers).

So the Roadrunner ended up as spare parts for the R3B (there will be a page of that too). The first part it donated was the tank, with the Roadrunner, so the Roadrunner is now with me a bit, when I see the R3B.