As the old adage goes, when you get given lemons, make lemonade. I’ve been “eyeing up” the BMW R1200GS for a little while now. Being that it’s a bike that can tour the globe. And now with Agnes parked up in the garage being reserved for race tracks and autobahns, what better opportunity to check out how this bike performs? First impressions: The sheer size of the thing is daunting to start of with, but for a 1200, she is remarkably light on the bars.

My F4 MV Agusta (Agnes) is a drop dead gorgeous piece of machinery. At any given stop tourists take photos. Even regular bikers at the Nürburgring pull their cameras to capture the red trim and clean racing lines. On top of the looks, she does one thing very, very, well. Speed. I’m not even close to harnessing her potential (yet). With a strong raw acceleration which sits you back in the seat and an ever present eagerness to always go faster, Agnes devours the road ahead.

All of the major brands. Kawasaki, Ducati, MV Agusta and Suzuki….

250kms from home, the battery light flashed red on my dash. After locating the blown fuse, we “happened upon” a spare 30amp fuse in our luggage. On restart, we were charging again….until 400mtrs down the road. Out of fuses, we unplugged the main headlamp and decided to see how far we could get on the battery alone. Surprisingly not that far… After making the “AA” call, we had to wait a couple hours.

Someone didn’t get the memo. The open speed limit in Norway is 80kmph**. For those of you who haven’t been playing the home game, the bikes we are riding only get comfortable at 150kmph upwards. So what does this mean? Pain. And plenty of it. For the non bike riders in the audience, pain and discomfort on a motorcycle leads to fatigue. Fatigue leads to bad. It’s a simple equation.

750km down today. Feeling remarkably better off than I was expecting and there is a couple reasons why. Autobahn kilometres are easy kilometres. You can soon clock them up. Both the Ducati and the Agusta are built for speed. They likey likey open speed limits! Without speed restrictions, everything on this bike makes sense. Without speed restrictions my race suit makes sense. At 150kmph, there’s enough air flow to get the bikes temperature down to a respectable level.

Mount your trusty steed and take to the wild blue yonder. In theory we are ready….but we know that in 12 days time, we will be broken men. Both of these bikes are gorgeous. I beg you differ. With either of these, on the track, you are the lord of the domain and in a straight line (we likes curves of course), you will be left wondering where we’ve gone?

It’s official. It’s done. One less thing. After putting on the new plates, one needed to take their new bike on her first little ride. How “better” than the Nürburgring??? I mean, taking a simple cruise around the quiet back roads, to get accustomed to the new riding position, bike dynamics, brakes, horsepower and handling, not to mention riding on the opposite side of the road. That stuff just sounds like child’s play.

Getting all “legal tegel” for a new motorcycle registration is a strange manual process here in Germany. License plates are assigned to the city in which you live. So if you move town, you have to re-register your vehicles and get the plates changed? A “bit” back-forwards if you ask me. Once you get through the paper work, you then make the walk down the road to the old lady who actually presses the metal plates.

I like the train. I like the trains in Germany. They are on time. They are fast. I also liked the helpful staff at the ticketing booth, and their advice on paying for my ticket on the train due to their booking system failure. Making sure I didn’t miss the next train on route. What I didn’t like though was the conductor whom later attempted to process my ticket. Before telling me that my card didn’t work (which has and does), giving me lip for not having cash, taking my passport and “bitching” about NZ and claiming that my destination address didn’t exist.

Note, this is the last beer I’ll be having for some time. Especially with Shoei in hand.

The little cup that could.