WindyCityJay
New Member
Hi everyone,
My name is Jay and I joined the site a couple of months ago when I was getting serious about picking up a used Super Tenere, but I haven't introduced myself yet or been active on the forums.
I got back into riding in 2015 after a few years away. Both a Super Tenere and an FJR were only my list at the time, but I had a limited budget and wanted a good all-arounder that was nimble enough for daily commuting but also solid enough for one-up tours and two-up day trips. The FJ-09 came out that spring and I was hooked. I picked up the first one on the floor at my local dealership and for several years it did everything I wanted. In addition to daily commutes and some weekend rides, I enrolled in a Total Control cornering course and then took a solo trip to Mexico following a route designed to hit some great twisties (Devil's Highway, San Juan Mountain Highway, Beartooth) and once a year I'd ride around Nelson/Kaslo with my wife. This year I decided it was time for an upgrade. The FJ-09 is just a little too small for longer two-up tours and I really wanted a bike for "hooky days" in August when I'd sneak into the mountains to fly fish the forestry trunk road. So, at the end of April I picked up a 2018 ES and the FJ-09 is now for sale. I was incredibly lucky and got a bike from a guy who had ridden S10s for over a decade and farkled it with an experienced hand (Arrow headers, wall to wall crash protection, Jesse luggage, Corbin seat, Mitas E10 front/E07 rear combo).
I've been doing a few short rides around town, but the first real test for the bike was supposed to be a week's worth of two-up touring on Vancouver Island last month. Interprovincial travel restrictions forced us to cancel the trip, but the same restrictions opened up a few spots in a two day Outdoor Adventure Academy off-road course that had to be relocated to Rocky Mountain House and I was able to get one of the spots. This past weekend my wife and I loaded up the bike and rode four hours north to stay with my parents and then I stripped the bike to bare essentials and continued on to the course. I can't tell you how happy I am with it so far. It was fantastic on the highway in our pretty wicked southern Alberta winds (hence the moniker). It is certainly not as punchy as the FJ with its torquey triple, but the power and stability on the Super Tenere was impressive. I've read comparisons on here to a locomotive and that kept going through my mind as we effortlessly churned our way through a line of thunderstorms that would have blown the FJ-09 off the road.
What really surprised me however was how well it did in the offroad course. The course was mostly slow speed control drills including slow races, seated and standing S-turns, hill climbs, slow descents, and emergency breaking - all in a gravel pit. Given the number of 1200 GSs in the course, it kind of felt like beamer convention, and most of the drills seemed designed to emphasize BMW handling and that boxer engine. The first day was a little rough - I had three drops in the seated S course, which thanks to the crash bars and bark busters didn't cause any damage. However, by the end of the day, things started to click and I got used to feathering the clutch and avoiding the front brake as the bike leaned under me on the loose surface (we were instructed to never use our rear brakes in the drills). By the second day, everything became much more natural and, in my biased opinion, the Super Tenere was keeping pace and even outperforming some of the beamers ridden by guys with a lot more offroad experience. The only real glitch was the inability to easily turn off the ABS for some of the skid drills (I did try the center-stand/2nd gear trick for one drill), but the trade off is that I now have a sense of how good the ABS system is on the bike. I don't think I'll go out of my way to shut it off.
Anyway, my thanks to everyone on the site for their posts - they allowed me to find a fantastic bike. I've used threads on here to make my travel toolkit, explore an ECU flash, select and source tires, and even decide on some upcoming accessories.
Cheers,
Jay
My name is Jay and I joined the site a couple of months ago when I was getting serious about picking up a used Super Tenere, but I haven't introduced myself yet or been active on the forums.
I got back into riding in 2015 after a few years away. Both a Super Tenere and an FJR were only my list at the time, but I had a limited budget and wanted a good all-arounder that was nimble enough for daily commuting but also solid enough for one-up tours and two-up day trips. The FJ-09 came out that spring and I was hooked. I picked up the first one on the floor at my local dealership and for several years it did everything I wanted. In addition to daily commutes and some weekend rides, I enrolled in a Total Control cornering course and then took a solo trip to Mexico following a route designed to hit some great twisties (Devil's Highway, San Juan Mountain Highway, Beartooth) and once a year I'd ride around Nelson/Kaslo with my wife. This year I decided it was time for an upgrade. The FJ-09 is just a little too small for longer two-up tours and I really wanted a bike for "hooky days" in August when I'd sneak into the mountains to fly fish the forestry trunk road. So, at the end of April I picked up a 2018 ES and the FJ-09 is now for sale. I was incredibly lucky and got a bike from a guy who had ridden S10s for over a decade and farkled it with an experienced hand (Arrow headers, wall to wall crash protection, Jesse luggage, Corbin seat, Mitas E10 front/E07 rear combo).
I've been doing a few short rides around town, but the first real test for the bike was supposed to be a week's worth of two-up touring on Vancouver Island last month. Interprovincial travel restrictions forced us to cancel the trip, but the same restrictions opened up a few spots in a two day Outdoor Adventure Academy off-road course that had to be relocated to Rocky Mountain House and I was able to get one of the spots. This past weekend my wife and I loaded up the bike and rode four hours north to stay with my parents and then I stripped the bike to bare essentials and continued on to the course. I can't tell you how happy I am with it so far. It was fantastic on the highway in our pretty wicked southern Alberta winds (hence the moniker). It is certainly not as punchy as the FJ with its torquey triple, but the power and stability on the Super Tenere was impressive. I've read comparisons on here to a locomotive and that kept going through my mind as we effortlessly churned our way through a line of thunderstorms that would have blown the FJ-09 off the road.
What really surprised me however was how well it did in the offroad course. The course was mostly slow speed control drills including slow races, seated and standing S-turns, hill climbs, slow descents, and emergency breaking - all in a gravel pit. Given the number of 1200 GSs in the course, it kind of felt like beamer convention, and most of the drills seemed designed to emphasize BMW handling and that boxer engine. The first day was a little rough - I had three drops in the seated S course, which thanks to the crash bars and bark busters didn't cause any damage. However, by the end of the day, things started to click and I got used to feathering the clutch and avoiding the front brake as the bike leaned under me on the loose surface (we were instructed to never use our rear brakes in the drills). By the second day, everything became much more natural and, in my biased opinion, the Super Tenere was keeping pace and even outperforming some of the beamers ridden by guys with a lot more offroad experience. The only real glitch was the inability to easily turn off the ABS for some of the skid drills (I did try the center-stand/2nd gear trick for one drill), but the trade off is that I now have a sense of how good the ABS system is on the bike. I don't think I'll go out of my way to shut it off.
Anyway, my thanks to everyone on the site for their posts - they allowed me to find a fantastic bike. I've used threads on here to make my travel toolkit, explore an ECU flash, select and source tires, and even decide on some upcoming accessories.
Cheers,
Jay