Mac Kirkpatrick [mailto:drbeemer@...] writes:
| If YOU have not written to the R90s list and told us something about
| yourself, *PLEASE* do so.
Ok. I didn't get into bikes until my friend Rick introduced me when I was
in my 20s and already through being immortal. I bought an R65 in '81 and
liked it because it was similar to the VW I had owned as a teenager. Went
through an '85 R80 monolever with S bars and fairing, and then 6 years ago I
bought an R1100RS.
When the K12RS first came out a couple years ago, I was living in the
Seattle area and friends with the local dealer, Paul. He insisted I had to
try out his new bike. K bikes have never excited me much, though the K12RS
is quite a machine. But between the rain and the fact that the bike wasn't
even broken in, I brought it back after a short jaunt. I was visiting a
week later, and I noticed this nice looking '75 silver smoke on the floor.
Eventually Paul noticed that I was drooling over it quite a bit, and he gave
me the keys and told me to try it out.
Well... it was a nice day, so I rode over the hills a bit to where there's
some nice road, and though the R90S felt fairling different at the controls
than did my old R80, I liked it quite a bit. It only had 18k miles on it!
When I got back, Paul came up to me and said in a somewhat hurt tone that he
could tell what kind of bike I liked. "Huh?" "You ride my new K12 around
for 10 minutes, but you're gone for an hour and a half on that." So, I had
to buy it. (You can see a recent photo of it in our files section at
)
The bike was a trade in for a K12RS. In fact, the PO also traded an '84
R100CS Last Edition, too, that looked mighty nice. The R90S had originally
been bought in Arizona, and spent a lot of time in Montana before getting to
the Emerald City. The PO didn't ride it a lot because he had a number of
bikes, I was told, and this was kept "offsite" (and out of sight of his
wife, I understand).
I rode it out to the Washington State rally a couple months later. Before I
could even find a spot to set up my tent, this fellow walks over to me and
says "That's my bike!" I immediately replied "Not any more!" He seemed to
be enjoying his K12RS, but I noticed he looked at the R90S a lot, too. The
bike won best classic in the judging, too.
I've tried not to ride it much, since it did have such low mileage, but I
can't really help myself and have put about 13k on it in the last three
years (in spite of having 3 other beemers to choose from). It's pretty much
stock, though I'm going to put braided lines on it soon.
--Darryl Richman
'94 R1100RS '75 R90S '61 R60/2 '53 R51/3 '41 R12
AMA/BMWMOA/BMWRA/ABC/MBBR/WSBMWR/IBMWR/EP Santa Cruz, CA
