ThE lAST WoRD

Cruisin’

Cindy Bennett, Member #4170

Ihave for a long while greatly admired from afar and not so afar the classic R1200C cruiser bikes. The first one I saw in the flesh belonged to former club member Joest in 2016 who left us to go back to Germany. These bikes have long been an either “love them or hate them” model, and some see them (unfairly I think) as the ugly duckling of the BMW Motorrad marque. BMW in the mid to late 1990’s were obviously trying to capture the USA cruiser market, but I am not sure how many Harley riders saw the light! If you are a James Bond fan (and who isn’t!) you may remember the R1200C from “Tomorrow Never Dies” where it is ridden by an obviously talented stunt man (sorry Pierce) through Asian markets and even does a jump over a helicopter with spinning rotors! TOMORROW NEVER DIES | Bond vs helicopter - YouTube Last year during Covid induced boredom/ obsessive online perusing, I had a test ride of a 1200C and also its baby “bruder” the R850C. This cemented my obsession, but the R1200C I test rode then had a mod of very low pipes which were just not practical and I tamped down the feelings of longing and focused on a more practical purchase – an almost opposite bike, being the Yamaha XT250 to practice for our Cape York ride. So fast forward to October 2021 and having sold the XT250 I was again casually stalking Bikesales. com.au on the lookout for a reasonably priced R1200C. There are a handful of these bikes for sale at any time, but the magic combo of lowish mileage, a pleasing colour and being local enough to view in-person as well as reasonably priced was oh so hard to find. did I find? Yes, an R1200C that had around 34,000km on the clock, handsome maroon QUEENSLANDER! paintwork, reasonably priced and located just over the border at Byron Bay in NSW. A quick message was sent to the seller Harriette who had inherited the bike from her late father - he had brought it as a collector’s item and never ridden it. Can I come and see it next week I asked Harriette – yes was the answer and a border zone permit was promptly applied for. One of the border zone exemptions for travel is to make a purchase you can’t get at home. With that box definitely ticked, I trundled down to Byron on a drizzly Melbourne Cup Tuesday morning after an early start from home to counter the 1 hour lost due to QLD’s ineffectiveness in implementing daylight savings. By the time I got down to Byron the rain had increased and I decided not to have a ride of the bike but started it and poked about with most of the controls. Having read on a “chrome-heads” forum that most issues with the R1200C are quite visible to the naked eye I took a punt and with a call to Duncan to align him with my mindset of the purchase, a deal was struck!

But wait, on a day in late October when I think I should have rightly been working but decided to take a break and look at Bikesales again – what The first of many coffee stops...