Long Term Test: 2007 BMW K1200S post #3

Third update
Current Mileage: 24,075

After one of the longest winters I have ever experienced, it was nice to finally get the bike out again and enjoy the burgeoning warmth of a New England spring. Since the big Beemer had gotten a full service right before it was put away for winter, I just needed to take the battery off the tender and hook everything back up. Without any hesitation, the bike fired up and settled into a smooth idle. Relatively fresh Michelin tires meant that the first rides this season were very tentative, especially given how much dirt and debris littered the roads.

This spring has also been unusually wet, with regular thunderstorms and even the odd snow flurry well into late March and early April. That meant several of my spring rides resulted in my getting caught in seriously sudden downpours. Still, in full gear from head-to-toe, the water stays outside, I stay dry, and the bike gets a much needed bath. The full fairings do an excellent job keeping me from getting drenched in the first place and channel away most of the wind and water, making even the worst storm tolerable. However, all that extra precipitation has resulted in an unusually prodigious spring, causing everything to be coated in a layer of fine green pollen.

Still, despite all of this, the bike has been flawless, not even so much as a hiccup.

This year, my wife and I started collecting our food scraps for composting, a decision we made because we were cooking at home a lot more, generating a ton of compostable waste that just felt like it could be put to better use than be thrown in the trash. One of my criteria was that I wanted the bin that we used to collect and store the food scraps to be able to fit in the top case for the Beemer, allowing me to take the bike to our local compost drop-off point. It just goes to show that with a little thinking ahead, motorcycles can be incredibly utilitarian, despite their reputation for being totally impractical.