The BMW GS Experience - RIDERS and BIKES

We don't want the highway .

We want that , that something else , that picture of Americana , wherever we're headed and getting out and getting there a different way , get away from the city , get away from the cubicle , fill up the tank and head out the back door .

You would be amazed at where you can take these motorcycles .

Once you have both some confidence and a little bit of skill , you can do unbelievable things with them .

These machines will take you anywhere you want to go .

We like to just head off in a certain direction , not knowing where we're going to camp and just ride adventure .

Motorcycling to me is the ultimate in , in life's experience .

I'm Helge Peterson , come from Christiansen Norway .

After I traveled around the world for 10 years , I found out that I needed to make a living for doing something .

So I started a company called Globe Riders .

We have a slogan , Globe Riders making tracks around the world .

And that's what we are trying to do right now .

We are 58 countries into an attempt to ride to and through 122 .

It's a possibility that there will be more as countries divide or less as countries merge together .

We had an email recently confirming that we've now surpassed the Guinness world record for the longest continuous motorcycle journey by a team .

I think the existing records 103,000 and we're at 100 and 52,000 on this trip so far .

And we're expecting to exceed 250 or 300,000 miles .

I'm an Ecologist and I bought my G S in 2001 to study bears in the wilderness .

And now I'm traveling the world on it .

For conservation bear trek is a movie that follows my journey to some of the wildest places around the world to find and protect bears .

Grizzlies , polar bears and Dean bears , sun bears .

I started very late in life .

I was 50 before I started and I've got many more rides ahead of me .

My name is Charlie Goss .

I am at Bob's BMW .

I'm salesman .

There .

Multi day trips are for any one of them who are my favorite and typically something new .

If I am going to the same place , I've been before , I'm just taking different roads .

My name is Aaron Jennings .

I work at South Sound BMW motorcycles in Fife , Washington .

I've been a G S guy for kind of forever and it's just to me it's the best mode of motorcycling that I can find .

Really .

My name is Tom .

I'm from Vancouver , Canada .

Uh riding around the world .

And actually three days ago , Wednesday morning , I was in , um , Guatemala .

My name is Doris Wiman .

I come from Germany , come from Bavaria .

And now we are here in Seattle at tour and we are preparing ourselves and the bikes for the trip going up to Alaska in winter on the globe .

Those tours , majority of the bikes are BMW S and they're not just majority .

It's not like 60 70% .

It's more like in 90 95% and many times 100% .

I just see that that's the most popular bike .

By far .

I would love to make a sensible answer as to why I'm riding this kind of bike .

But I went into a bike store and I saw at the time an 1100 I just thought it was the weirdest , biggest looking bike I'd ever seen .

And I was just in love with the looks of the thing .

I ride an F 6 50 G S Dakar .

It's my trustee workhorse and it gets me pretty much anywhere I need to go and , and my field work takes me to some pretty gnarly places , you know , the kind of places you find the animals that I study bears .

Wolves , Cougars , it's nimble and comfortable and at home in any conditions and it packs like a mule .

If I were limited to just one bike , it would be the 1200 G S .

It is light enough and nimble enough to get into rough places .

And yet when you have to be on the freeway , it can rule along with the best of them and it's smooth .

You get good mileage , it handles .

Well , I think a lot of bikes can do a lot of different things .

But what I would say is that for around the world touring , the F 800 Gs is the perfect bike .

It's a fantastic combination of off road and on road capabilities .

But if you're going to go around the world touring and you need to be able to ride really , really rough off road and not think twice about it .

This is a perfect bike for that for this trip going up to Alaska in winter .

I needed a bike that is easy to handle because I'm carrying a lot of luggage with me .

And on the other hand , I'm traveling on ice and snow , so I need a bike that easy to handle and the F 800 does fulfill all these wishes I had .

I can really do a lot of mileage with it .

A lot of fast mileage .

And I really love riding that bike .

Probably my favorite G S to this point of the , of the G S line has always been the adventure .

It's the one I like to pick up and do a long 400 mile weekend on without doing stop for gas .

I tell people this bike will change the way you tour .

You can do two up on it all weekend long and ride it to Alaska .

Uh You can go bomb down some fire roads with it .

And I always tell folks this is my Swiss Army knife of the whole lineup .

It's this bike .

The challenge is to be able to hold back because you get this fantastic machine and it's easy just to go forth and back to work or commute their own .

But it's just asking for more .

It's teasing you all the time and you read , you open a magazine , you read an article and you see somebody else .

Exactly .

Same bike .

Just went to Alaska , just went to South America or to Africa with that bike .

So that's the biggest challenge to be able to hold back and not to break loose and go out and break through all the boundaries that you never thought you will go through these , uh , places yourself .