Garage Activity! and Pony Corral Cruise Night

One of the great things about finally having a garage is the cool storage stuff you can buy for it! I think the first thing that I got after we bought the house was this tire rack to mount on the wall, as I am sick of either a) keeping wheels in the basement and lugging them up and down stairs, or b) paying the dealer$hip $50/year to store my wheels for me.

The thing went together fine with a minimum of cursing or disassembly/reassembly. It seems to hold the set of 17" VW alloy wheels up there with reasonable security, and despite the strange perspective in this photo, it IS level... I even used a bubble level when assembling it ;-)

GARAGE!!! so awesome to have a garage.

Later on I took the Porsche out to the Pony Corral for cruise night. Not a lot going on there but saw a nice Triumph GT6 on Minilites. I really dig this car for some reason - it is TINY.

Can you guess what this is? Had to take a picture of the awesome machine-turned aluminum dashboard of this Turbo Trans-Am. I remember quite clearly taking a ride in the back of a Turbo T-A driven by my first girlfriend's cool/scary older sister back in the '80s, and the distinctive dashboard really stuck with me. Dynamically the car was probably junk but that dash was just so... cool (I'm sorry to keep using that word but it just seems to fit so well).

Some kids playing "Chinese fire drill" (can we still say that?) in matching Mercedes 450 (left) and 280 (right)SLs. I think (hope) that the cars belonged to their families. I kept an eye on them when they ran over to the newish Aston Martin convertible (just behind the yellow 240Z at upper left) but their shenanigans were not repeated. There were people having their pictures taken beside the Aston which I thought was just a bit weird.

The Mercedes were obviously well-used but tidy.

Bradley GT... dear God. Chacun a son gout and all that, but maybe give it a wash and clean the trash out of the interior. That's all I'm sayin'.

Rear three-quarter view of the GT6 Mk3; tastily styled by Michellotti. Need this as eye-bleach for the Bradley.

As I say there was really not too much of interest for me at the cruise this week. A guy applying tire dressing to his new Subaru WRX; some OK British stuff including a Triumph Spitfire, older Mini and MGB; Mustang club with new Mustangs that have interesting styling but being new, are somewhat "meh" for people who like old cars; and finally some real "WTFs" like the Bradley and a "Raptor" pickup truck. I know it will pick up (ha) as the summer continues.

Later, skaters...

BMW Demo Day - S1000RR test ride

Yesterday over the lunch hour I headed down to our local BMW motorcycle dealer, Wildwood Sports, to participate in a demo day ride on the S1000RR superbike. I'd been booked to ride this model in the demo ride last year too, but the bike ended up not being available as it had been crashed on a demo in Calgary :-(

No such bad luck this year as the double-R arrived intact and ready to go.

BMW had brought a wide selection of bikes for riders to try out. It cost $30 to participate in the demo ride but this money was donated to charity. The dealership provided sandwiches and donuts which was nice as I didn't have time to get lunch otherwise!

The weather started cloudy, which was concerning to me since I'd only brought a dark tinted visor for my helmet, but soon the clouds parted and the weather was bright and sunny for the ride.

This was "my" ride... a 2013 S1000RR in "Granite Grey Metallic Matt". A gorgeous bike with a spec sheet to match: 193bhp pushing only 203kg wet weight...

I don't have a very broad experience of liter sportbikes (modern ones I mean; I don't really count my Ducati 900SS/SP or the old GSX-R1100) but riding this bike blew me away. Great power everywhere in the rev range, telekinetic handling, and even "reasonable" comfort although the seat pad got pretty firm after an hour's riding.

Of course, being a factory demo ride, the opportunities to stretch the performance envelope are necessarily limited, especially with road traffic, semi-trailers and "Farmer Palmer" pootling along at 80km/h in a 90-limit... but the one time I got to twist the throttle a bit the bike responded ferociously but perfectly controllably. Nobody "needs" this much motorcycle for the street but my response to those who say "it's dangerous" is always the same... it takes a rider to twist the throttle and the bike only goes as fast as the rider makes it. Personally I would rarely ever use even one-tenth of the performance this bike offers but WOW, it sure was fun.
  

Later, talking to the dealer principal, I found out that this machine was still in its break-in period and was subject to a special rev-limiter at 9,000rpm or so. I wouldn't have known as I never took it over 8 grand or thereabouts, still more than enough to see 1XX km/h on the digital speedo ;-)
   

Cockpit is tidy and functional as you'd expect a high-end BMW to be.

Some nice detailing here - I like the styling of the stubby exhaust canister and the neat alloy pegs. Some vibration is transmitted through the pegs but it didn't seem particularly intrusive.

Monster radial calipers give massive braking power. Will stand you on your ear if you're not careful!
 

I personally quite like the asymmetrical headlight styling treatment, although I recognize it might not be to everyone's taste. Distinctive, though, yes?

Thanks to Wildwood and BMW for an enjoyable noontime ride. The S1000RR is a sublime machine and I would love to own one. The ante in this game, however, is not insignificant (~$17K and change), and I don't think that I would ride this bike enough for that to make sense. Come a lottery win, though, the double-R would be the liter-bike I'd choose to own for sure - albeit probably in the white/blue/red "Motorsport" colour scheme ;-)