A friend mentioned LWR several years ago while we were talking about McGregor's narration of the Faster movies about MotoGp, and he mentioned that McGregor was a motorbike nut and that he and another guy rode round the world on GS12s and made a movie about it. I parked that info. I had no use for it at the time, but I hoard information of that sort. For the last year, I've been in the mood to park the sport bikes after 30 years and get back to my off-road beginnings with a GS, and perhaps now I'm old enough to consider relaxing tours rather than high-intensity knee dragging. The bike decision has been ramping up to where I'm ready to make a purchase this summer.
Last week, one early evening around 7:00pm, I was sloshing around the internet, hemming and hawing over the merits of an F800GS-A or an R1200GS-A, that disused info about McGregor's trip came dislodged and I promptly hopped over to NetFlix and found it. I watched it straight through that whole night. The next day I started (and finished) LWD. Excellent shows. LWR over LWD by a long shot. LWR was just a couple cats running round on bikes having a great time seeing what they see and meeting who they meet and dropping big bikes in bigger mud holes. It was fantastic! LWD seemed more like it was planned by a publicist with all manner of "special" way points and pre-arranged VIP access. Who gets to ride a bike up the side of the Great Pyramids of Giza? Surely not me, but Ewan McGregor did and there was no one else around. It's as if they closed the Pyramids for them. It didn't twang in my heart as something I can do too (money and time permitting, of course), like LWR did. It just seemed like another thing that movie stars get to do when their people call ahead to government officials and they bring TV cameras. I'll concede that the meeting with the President of Rwanda was spontaneous. I buy that, but a private tour of Roman ruins in Lybia? Flying in to meet up with Richard Effing Branson for some self-indulgent Unicef crap? Granted, it didn't stop me watching it all straight through.
The upshot of the Long Way Round/Down series? Question answered: R1200GS Adventure in Olive Green it is! Screw that silly little F800GS Adventure. I don't know and therefore don't trust it's engine, I've been maintaining chains since I was five and would love to stop doing so, and I really don't want to go back to inner tubes.
Jim
2009 Ducati Monster 1100
2009 Suzuki RSV650 Gladius
2001 DRZ400E
1981 RM465
1997 BMW 528I (54K miles)
(All for sale to fund a 2014 BMW R1200GS Adventure)
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