The case for modern highways.

Modern highways (motorways, autostrade, autobahn, autoroutes, whatever you want to call them) have been around for so long that people take them for granted and think of them as the only option for road travel. And so it's easy to miss just what a transformation they represent and how these networks have allowed us not just to cover longer distances more quickly, but to alter our perception of distances and make 500km seem like nothing.

I purposely avoided them entirely, when I took the 1200S up north past the Apennines one beautiful sunny autumn day.

The reason for sticking to older roads was to cruise along unhurried, through the scenery instead of removed from it. And because almost everybody else was speeding along the autostrada off in the distance, it meant there was hardly anyone where I was. The many towns and largeish cities I had to cross, slowed things down tremendously and were often an annoyance, but the rest of the way was a beautiful, cerebral experience of autumn colors and the steady hum of the Harley-Davidson's V twin.

The bike was flawless, of course. I had absolute confidence that nothing would give me trouble, and so it was. Truly, they really made something extraordinary when they created the Evolution series of the Sportster.

The addition of the "Sundowner" seat and the windshield turn the Sportster into a capable all-day tourer. Yes, as I've conceded before, the 1200S is perhaps a little rough around the edges, but it can still cruise along with no discomfort to the rider; doing 100/110 kph at around 3.000 rpm with the windshield makes it feel like you're in a dream, as your entire upper body is fully sheltered from the air, while your lower extremities are close enough to the engine to stay warm.

On smooth surfaces the ride is taut and steady, but the occasional potholes really take the rear shocks to their limits and make me curse whatever municipality I happen to be in for letting their roads get so bad.

And so along the old Flaminia, to the fortified towns of Orte and Orvieto, then deep into the Tuscan hinterland with small pretty towns, sleepy in their late morning sunshine. On towards Chiusi, Torrita and Montevarchi where I stopped for a quick lunch and what must have been the best coffee I've had in years. At that point I can aim the "Narrowglide" front end of the bike towards the foot of the mountain, cross lake Bilancino and begin the ascent on the famous SS 65 "della Futa". I hadn't been up here in many years, I don't even remember what bike I was on that time, maybe my previous Sportster or the Fastback. It's always a very rewarding road and definitely enjoyable without traffic and the usual hordes of contemporary motorcycles you'd find during the summer. Someone had gone to the hassle of having a banner printed and hung outside their house, it read "Basta moto!", so it must be quite annoying.

I only stopped for two quick photos, then continued on my way down towards Bologna and Modena, as the light faded and my German headlight cut through the darkness to the end of my ride.

Who knows what else there is to see up there...

BMW field test - Morocco (epilogue)

Over the next couple of days, the remainder of our trip in Morocco was a climb back over the Atlas and down to Marrakech once more, where we left the bikes in Matteo's capable hands, ready for the return home.

Now heading away from the desert, we encountered more towns, though still among vast expanses of nothingness that were very scenic.

One such town was called Kourkouda, where we stopped for the millionth tajin of the trip, though this one stood out as being particularly tasty.

As we sat on plastic chairs in the shade overseeing this intersection in the middle of nowhere, I couldn't help but wonder what it would take to escape the tyranny of the West and disappear down here.

Waking from my daydream, we finished our mint tea and got going again, only to run into a silly electrical problem on the Yamaha, easy enough to bypass but fiendish to diagnose.

One last tricky climb on rocky slopes cut across mountain ridges led us to a spectacular vista, before a descent into an immense plain, truly the last before the High Atlas.

This marked the end of our offroad adventure, after this it was all tarmac and tourists. The descent from the Tizi n'Tichka pass heading towards Marrakech was perhaps a little too spirited and I may have overworked the brakes: the front caliper started seizing up and was not releasing. I stopped immediately to see what was happening, it's possible I may have had a little too much DOT4 in the reservoir and it had no room to expand as it got hot. It could also be that the pistons had accumulated so much dirt and sand by that point in the trip that they could no longer retract fully, or the master cylinder itself may need to be flushed out and cleaned. Anyway, a couple other guys pulled up and they helped me bleed the system a little bit. Not impossible to do on your own but always easier if one guy pulls the brake lever while the other one cracks the bleed nipple and shuts it off again - and yes, you can also do it by yourself using a strong rubber band or a piece of string or a luggage strap to keep the brake lever squeezed: back on the road and no more issues (I may need new brake pads soon though).

If this feels rather rushed, it's because the last couple of days went by as a blur; it seems impossible to recall every detail, though luckily the most important things are captured in memory and on this blog. Above all, I can call this field test a complete success for the R100GS, and that's satisfying.

Back in my university days, my good friend Graham was fond of saying "it's all a matter of perspective", so inevitably a trip like this puts the other trips we do back home into perspective and allows us to see them as less stressful but certainly no less rewarding: a Majella tour will always be a world-class trip no matter what. I wonder if I'll take the Fastback or the Sportster for the next glorious loop...

BMW field test - Morocco (day 6)

The ride out of M'hamid begins unapologetically with a wide, sweeping sand track; soft, beautiful yellow sand that requires gripping onto the bike with your inner legs, pushing your weight as far back as possible, and then a steady throttle in second gear, fast enough to maintain momentum and float but not so fast as to overtax the engine. The front wheel does float but the sensation can be rather disconcerting at first, almost as though the steering dynamics have suddenly reversed.

After a few meters though it becomes the most stupidly fun thing we've done so far, and we're powering into the sand banks, jumping over small dunes, weaving our way through the track like it's some sort of playground.

This continued for some time, until the ground became gradually firmer and we started climbing imperceptibly towards Tissint. You could still see some of the "Dakar reenactment fans" hanging around, but there weren't as many as the day before on this particular desert crossing.
One thing that became much more frequent were stones. Small and loose at first, almost like oversized gravel and therefore easily passable, but every now and then there would be bigger or sharper rocks. You could tell when the terrain changed by the sound the wheels made over the rocks: steady and low when riding on gravel, but suddenly louder and more alarming when we hit the big ones. The occasional sharp blow felt at the handlebar was not too bad, but when the entire track was nothing but rocks, it slowed us down and made for quite the balancing act.

Somewhere around here: 29°51'55.2"N 6°02'49.6"W we found ourselves cresting a large dune. From the top, our heading meant we would have to ride downhill and into a sandy flat that must have been about 400/500 meters wide. The descent itself was not difficult, provided you remembered that - unlike tarmac where you can just coast - sand requires you to power on even downhill. Once at the bottom though, I very quickly realized something was wrong.

It was a trap. 

An infernal bowl filled with quicksand, impossible to grip or navigate. I could feel my clutch starting to roast almost right away so I stopped and let it (and myself) cool down. As soon as I was able to get moving again, I took off in second gear, leaving the clutch lever well alone and made a monumental effort to just power through until I reached the other side. I hated every moment of it.

Luckily, temperatures were decidedly mild, otherwise I surely would have overheated. As you can see in the photo below, the sky was overcast and for a moment it even seemed like it might have rained.

Another long, sandy section led us to an oasis, with palm trees, water and birdsong, just as you'd expect (29°52'58.2"N 6°07'08.0"W). This was right around midday, so we stopped for a long pause and had some food.

One very unexpected thing we found in this place was the cold: the wind had picked up significantly, and we had to layer up to stay warm.

Lulled into a false sense of serenity by the peacefulness of the oasis and the nice food, we jolted back into action once we realized how much farther we still had to ride that day.

Later in the afternoon we met more stones and at one point I lost pressure entirely at the front wheel. Looking down towards the rim confirmed that the bead on my Continental TKC80 had jumped inwards. With the bike on the center stand, I used a couple of CO₂ cartridges to expand the tire back into place: the rapid burst of pressure was just enough to pop the bead. After a while, Matteo caught up and we used his on-board compressor to inflate the tires, upping the psi rating for both to make them a bit firmer than what I had been riding on up until that point. Off we went, with no more trouble on the rocks but... now the bike no longer worked in the sand. We reached another long sandy section and I ended up eating it, twice. Fair game the first time, I shut the fuel off and quickly started digging under the bike to help me right it. Witold came over to help and I got going again. But the second time, not ten meters away made me so angry that I shouted one of Italian's worst profanities at the top of my lungs. Later in the day Witold told me he could see that over the following 15 minutes I was riding angry, and it's true: I was tense, angry at myself for not being able to just do it and it took me a while to go "it's the tire pressure, stupid."

By that point we were on much firmer ground, with an absolutely dead flat plain that stretched out in front of us for a dozen kilometers. With little reference points to gauge speed and progress, it became slightly disorienting at times.

The odd tree started to appear again, here and there, and the landscape changed once again. At this point there was an actual gravel track we could follow, stopping in the shade to drink when we could.

Despite it being the middle of the afternoon, the heat was particularly noticeable here; it was a bit of a struggle to collect ourselves and push on. An unexpected series of bends and another climb took us towards the next stage of our day's itinerary.

And then we reached what must have certainly been the most surreal of all the landscapes we traversed during our trip. This was made all the more striking by the fact that the clouds had returned, bringing relief from the heat. Despite the vastness of it all, such as we had experienced for days now, here there was only a narrow, deep, single track, clearly defined and seemingly a clear path to follow. Only it turned out to be where all the moisture had accumulated: the appearance of cracked soil was only that, an appearance. In reality, as soon as the weight of your front wheel pressed down, it gave way to sludgy mud. Giulio and Witold, about 50 meters ahead of me, had dismounted and were frantically waving to get out of the track and onto... the rest of the plain. This place where we found ourselves was covered in the strangest dried clumps of twigs, and it was only later that I realized these were all rose of Jericho, as far as the eye could see. Remarkable...

Tissint now lay just 30 kilometers and one camel crossing ahead of us, one final stretch for the day. Another incredible trip that put the R100GS to the test, the bike once again proving just how capable and competent of a machine it really is.

BMW field test - Morocco (day 5)

While the previous day certainly felt like the highlight of the trip, day 5 was no less impressive: a long, unfolding track that pushed us even farther into the desert, toward the Algerian border. We rode so deep into the borderlands that we eventually reached a military checkpoint, where soldiers checked our papers before letting us continue. I actually enjoyed the atmosphere throughout the day and also in the small town we reached, much more than I did Merzouga as it felt far more authentic, devoid of tourists and truly far from everything.
We covered part of a historic Paris-Dakar stage, as did dozens of other enthusiasts on all sorts of cars, trucks and bikes. That stretch of desert attracts a particular breed of wealthy weirdos but out here, there are no posers. It’s all real.

The beginning of this particular itinerary included around 40 kilometers of the dreaded fesh-fesh, the talcum-like extra fine sand that has claimed many clutches, choked intake manifolds and scored engine internals irreparably, spelling ruination for as many intrepid adventurers. In preparation for this challenge, many of us attempted to ride the dunes at Merzouga, to get a sense of what the fesh-fesh might feel like: I all but burnt my clutch just fooling around, and had the wherewithal to stop, let it cool down and limp back to camp as best I could.

I decided to skip that first section, and two other guys followed suit.

We stopped at a small roadside café, our curiosity piqued by the motorcycle perched upon its entrance:

As we sat outside, enjoying an unusual cool breeze and cloudy sky, the young guy who was preparing our tea picked fresh mint from his garden. We sipped slowly, quietly laughing at the others who must surely have been struggling and sweating buckets right around that same time. Turns out, they absolutely had been.

We had a fixed point along the itinerary where we had to meet, both variants of the initial stage converged there. It was also the only place where we could refuel, not at a gas pump - we would not encounter such sophistication for another day - but out of plastic bottles and a funnel. Matteo had warned us we would need around 400 kilometers of range after that point, something I could just about manage with my GS. Hordes of other riders were also lining up outside the "general store", some gulping down a can of Coke, others trying to wash sand out of their mouths and noses.

We regrouped with the others who were already so tired they could hardly laugh at themselves; when humor is foregone, it is a sure sign that things are daunting.

When our turn came to fill our gas tanks, these kids came up and it was then I noticed that their funnels were lined with cloth so it could catch impurities (but there really weren't any).

Groups of about six to eight riders would take off rippin' and roaring, raising clouds of dust that obscured the view of the one lane leading out of town.

The look on Matteo's face said it all: this was where things got serious. No more joking around. With concentration and a sense of urgency, we took off and entered the vast expanse ahead of us.

Such wide-open spaces can distort your depth perception, almost flattening the true distance to the horizon, and making you question whether you’re still on the right heading. No wonder cockpit-mounted compasses are ubiquitous in rally vehicles. We are also not used to riding in a straight line for such extended periods of time; our bread and butter are the mountains and their winding roads, forests and lakes.

After an uncertain stretch of time, we reached an old garrison, surrounded by nothing but a perimeter wall and sand as far as the eye could see, in all directions. It has been converted into some sort of posh lodge and there were people obviously staying there, probably as part of other "adventure holidays". We stopped to adjust our gear and take some photos, including of the massive trucks that were there:

Each time we stopped, we marveled out loud at what we had just ridden through. Each time we took off again we discovered a new type of terrain. We were completely offroad and far from any semblance of a track, let alone a "road", moving through a Martian landscape where there was no one around. The blissful absence of human shapes as far as they eye could see made it seem as though there truly was nobody around to bother us... or help us if we got into trouble.

What we had for the rest of the day were fast tracks on the way to M'hamid, fun and impressive. Whether it was hard-packed dirt, a salt lake bed where you could ride flat out, or these strange "mini-plateaus" you could just skim across, it all felt exhilarating.

We all certainly looked the part until you realize the pros did and still do the same type of stages at more than twice the speeds we were managing. Like I said before, we only covered part of a historic Paris-Dakar rally stage and were still exhausted by the end of it.

All that fun and all that heat took their toll on my boots though, which I discovered when we finally stopped under a solitary tree. I stepped off the bike and immediately tripped over myself, confused by what could’ve possibly gotten in my way out here in the middle of the desert. Turns out it was my own boots: the soles had peeled almost clean off, the glue having clearly reached its thermal limit. That little bit of shade was enough to instantly lighten everyone's mood, not that anyone was unhappy, but you really do have to love this type of thing in order not to notice how tiring it actually is. We ate a little something, gulped down more water and electrolyte, and we joked around while I patched up my boots with zip ties and duct tape, to general hilarity. The bodge held until the evening. More or less.

Meanwhile, others were taking advantage of this rare pause in the shade to check their bikes over and make small adjustments. All was well, we were ready to press on.

Out of nowhere, rocks began to jut from the ground, at first scattered, then rising into massive boulders on the horizon. They seemed to funnel us towards the only passable track up a colossal ridge. We didn't know it yet, but we were about to make a serious climb in order to descend on the other side for the final stretch of the day. By that point the group had already split into single riders or pairs at most. Giulio and I made the tough climb at walking pace over rocks the size of footballs, stopping about two thirds of the way up to catch our breath and rest a bit. When we reached the actual pass, we found Alex on his Africa Twin, who was also taking a break. We decided Giulio would continue on his own so he could catch up to the others ahead, while Alex and I waited for Matteo in the Land Cruiser, slowly but surely making his way up as well - that man has some serious offroad driving and riding skills, let me tell you.

Arriving in M'hamid was a mix of elation, awe, and pure fatigue. We were bleary-eyed, caked in dust, our bikes ticking and radiating heat as they sat parked in the courtyard of our lodge.

Just down the road from the lodge was a welder and a hardware supply shop; exactly the kind of places that seem to appear right when you need them. I picked up a new roll of duct tape, more zip ties, and a bottle of glue.

Back at the lodge, I patched up my boots properly and sat back in the shade to let the glue set, letting the day soak in: it had been long, hot, and intense - and we never stopped smiling.