Yoop! There it is!

Long story short:

Finally got me a BMW GSA. Went for a shakedown ride to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (aka “the Yoop”). Cut through Canada. Checked out Mackinaw City. Cruised dunes along Lake Michigan. Ate a pastie…tasty. Eyeballed Lake Superior. Rode 2150 miles and didn’t hit a deer. Bonded with new bike. No drama, home to Mama.

But since this is my blog, I also get to tell the short story, long...

If, like me, you happen to share this arcane, all-consuming, and inexplicable-to-non-riders obsession with so-called “adventure bikes,” you either own (or have thought about owning) a BMW GS, German shorthand for Gelände/Straße, or Terrain/Street.

It is the undisputed grandpappy of all ADV bikes, the form after which all others have been factored. Introduced in 1980 (my sophomore year of high school), evolved and enlarged over the subsequent decades much like the legendary Porsche 911 (and myself—an enlarged version of which turns 62 this year), and made famous on-screen thanks to The Long Way Round—Ewan MacGregor’s and Charlie Boorman’s hit Apple TV paean to motorcycle travel, the GS is to this genre of motorcycles what Kleenex is to facial tissue and Band-Aid is to, well, Band-Aids. The sine qua-non.

BMW has punched its way to greatness churning out over one million of these distinctive beasts, with their oddly-protruding “boxer” motors, fat tanks, and imposing saddle height. And now I’m…one in a million!

This whole GS thing has been festering with me for a loooong time, kind of like a long-distance, unrequited love (otherwise known as stalking). And quite a bit longer than my enduring fixation with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, AKA “the Gelande Beyond the Mitten” (at least by me).

So in many ways, the GS (and my U.P. trip aboard it)—represents the denouement of my motorcycle origin story, the “electrifying conclusion” to a couple of decades of riding and more than a couple of bikes.

So here’s the somewhat longer version, with pics.

My decades-long love affair with motorcycles began in my forties with my first actual (albeit second-hand) bike: this ice-blue, BMW F650GS.

Yep, that’s me and her, 20 or so summers ago. (RIP Tag, our Tibetan terrier, and that somewhat anemic and now long-gone beech tree). I bought the bike from a colleague at work (who was, ironically, trading up to his first big GS), and when I brought it home, I told my wife it wasn’t actually mine, but that I was just storing it for a friend who couldn’t afford a garage in NYC.

This is what my late folks would refer to as a bubbameister. But when a helmet and riding jacked arrived from Revzilla, she kinda figured things out.

I was always a German car guy and Beemer fan to begin with (thanks to a German mom); but there was also something about the look of a tall dirt bike with aluminum panniers that kind of swept me off my feet. I mean, it said “you’re gonna be going places!” So me and my F650 embarked on a multi-year romance, as I learned how to navigate the world on two wheels with a modest single-chamber heart beating between my legs.

But as all first romances do, this one came to an end around, around the time when I realized that attempting highway speeds on a thumper single—even a Rotax/BMW thumper single—is like showing up to fight tractor trailers with a sewing-machine-powered minibike.

I guess you could say we just…grew apart.

So on the rebound, I met and fell in love with another BMW, this time a second-hand F800GS.

The “F” class of GS bikes had a somewhat larger dual-chambered heart (still do), a parallel twin which produced certainly more bark, if only incrementally more bite. Regardless, me and my F8 rode all over Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine together, that bike ushering in my summer love of taking off to New England to explore and moto-camp.

Here’s she is in 20-someteen at the small Connecticut ski mountain where I’ve since become a ski patroller in winter.

We got on well for several years, but even with twice the firing-chambers of my original F650, on longer trips on the highway (to get anywhere interesting) this still felt like riding a tall, adequately-powered dirt bike.

And it also sort of felt like a BMW GS…but not quite.

Since I was still early in my middle-aged motorcycling career, and the big GS still seemed utterly out of reach (from both a size, cost, and audacity standpoint), I decided to go big…but just not that big. So I plunked down hard-earned cash on my first ever new motorcycle, a 2013 Yamaha Super Ténéré. Here we are on a trip to Nova Scotia.

Man, what a great, great bike.

Rock solid. Utterly dependable. Endlessly packable. Cruised like a Stratofortress on the highway, danced like a chonky but agile skier in the off road whoops.

Together, we scoured the eastern seaboard from Maryland and Virginia up to Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia…et al. Many of the ride reports written here on Longitude&Gratitude were ridden aboard my beloved Super-T.

We went to a lot of cool places and did a lot of cool shit together.

I also loved that it was, as I liked to say then, “all the GS without the BS” — half the cost of the definitional article, but with virtually none of the forum-reported headaches, like shaft-drive issues, recalls, etc. (I’ve learned since to heavily discount forum nega-mania…the happy owners are too busy riding and enjoying to shit-post!)

With the Ténéré, if you could forgive the John-Deere-like exhaust note and somewhat rudimentary technology (I mean, it did have ABS and traction control, but its dimly-lit LED dash gave vintage Casio watch vibes), you could almost see the Super Tenner being a “forever” bike.

And I did. Almost.

But after 10 awesome, fabulous, fun and adventurous years—with nothing more than oil changes and fresh tires (those Heidenau K60s were getting kinda square, I gotta admit), my trusty Super Ten started to feel…a little long in the tooth, and almost technologically retro in the new age of Teslas, Rivians…and increasingly space-ship-like BMW GS’s.

So I sent my beloved Ténéré off to National Powersports Distributors in New Hampshire to find a new lover…

And I welcomed this Italian beauty into the moto-fam.

I’d always been a Guzzi Guy (one of my true “forever” bikes is a 2016 V7II Stornello that’s still in my garage—and not leaving), and I’d developed a minor online fixation with Guzzi’s mid-size ADV bike, the V85 TT.

Many folks compared it quite favorably to the earlier BMW GSes (like the R1100GS and R1150GS), as it was (even in this modern, water-cooled, Euro-5-compliant world) still an air-cooled beast. And man, I loved it.

Despite going backwards in displacement (from the 1200cc Ténéré to an 850cc “Guardia d’Onore” as the black livery was called), it was sexy, comfortable, and capable. So much so, that I said to myself, “man, when I retire, I’m gonna ride that thing to California.”

And I did.

I retired (from advertising and corporate career-land) in midsummer of 2024. And last summer, after becoming an EMT…I did what I said I was going to do.

I dipped my boots in the Long Island Sound about a mile from our home in Connecticut…

and rode…

that…

Guzzi…

clear…

across…

the U…

S…

of A…

from the Wild West

(Pew! Pew! Pew!)

through Yellowstone…

and the great Nevada desert…

all the way to Cal-i-for-ni-yay.

Yay.

Ceremonial boot-wetting on the Left Coast.

And while I was in the Bay Area, I got to see my old pal, college roommate, and moto-adventure-partner Jonah Houston, AKA “the Brotherman,” who features prominently in may of the ride reports here as well.

My journey covered about 4,500 miles over 18 days. And it was nothing short of
A W E S O M E. Overall, the Guzzi was terrific. It ran like a champ without a whimper, shudder, or leak, for 16 days straight. And I was hammering it.

But the journey did reveal some of the challenges and limitations of an 850cc air cooled motorcycle for serious distance travel.

Starting with comfort: the seat was actually pretty, pretty, pretty good (as Larry David would say), especially with a supplemental AirHawk and sheepskin butt pad. Good, but not great. The overall ergos were superb as well. The bike is light and wieldable, and never intimidating in its mass, height or girth. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as comfortable, centered, and balanced on a bike as I’ve felt on my V85. (That’s part of what made parting with it so difficult.)

From a tech standpoint, the Guzzi was… adequate. Ride modes, ABS, and an okay TFT screen (updated and much nicer in the newer, 2024+ models). The cruise control is rudimentary, but it at least has it, and it works. This IMHO is an absolute necessity for a cross-country journey (or any other ride where you’re spending hours at high speed on slab) unless you want carpal tunnel syndrome with your fries from Sonic.

But here’s where we get to the real rate-limiter for the bike, figuratively and literally. The Guzzi’s otherwise delightful, air-cooled, jugs-up motor just runs out of gas (in the metaphoric sense) just when you really need it. It is positively joyful at 65; happy at 70; trying to smile at 75; not really grinning (but bearing it) at 80; and feeling like an Italian-woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown at 85 and beyond.

In a nutshell, the V85 just doesn’t have the beans for wide-open, flat-out highway travel, which (whether you like it or not) requires keeping up with double-trailer semi trucks thundering across the Great Plains, where the speed limit is however the heck fast you can go. The V85 also lacks the weight and mass needed for real stability in this scenario as well. Ironically, its lighter weight and manageability is a super-power for many other types of riding…just not for endurance travel.

Finally the V85 lacks some advanced safety features and rider niceties that even riders like me have become used to on other modern vehicles, notably cars. There’s no blind-spot monitoring or integrated TPMS, no adaptive cruise control or adjustable windshield (electronic or otherwise), and no smartphone integration with anything like Apple CarPlay.

Does one need all that on a motorcycle? Absolutely not. I rode my Coast-to-Coast ride without it. But would it have made the journey safer, more comfortable, more pleasant, and even more enjoyable? Quite possibly.

So after my cross country trip, I took another multi-day, high-ish mileage trip this spring down to Gettysburg, to see if my love for the Guzzi was permanent, or if I should scratch the itch for something with a bigger motor, longer distance legs, and more creature comforts.

So after that trip, I rode my Guzzi up to MAX BMW in New Milford, CT to test out a 2026 GS Adventure. (I took a passing glance at the regular new GS 1300, but the new version just doesn’t do it for me, looks-wise—I prefer the R1250GS!)

Well, that test ride proved fateful, because a week later, I wound up trading in my Guzzi and buying that very same bike, and bringing it home.

GS HEYYY!!!!

And man, what a difference, especially out on the open highway.

For starters, and in comparison with my beloved Guzzi, the GSA (“A” for Adventure) is gi-effing-gantic. It’s like a bike that’s eaten another bike and still hasn’t digested it yet.

The GSA tank could solve all of our national oil-reserve issues. It holds nearly eight (yes, eight) gallons. Ordinary motorcycles like my Triumph Bonnie hold about a quarter of that.

The tank is so wide that it requires something of a “mansplained” riding posture, which would earn you dirty looks (or a hostile thigh-poke) on the NYC subway. It is like riding a very, very, very fat horse.

But like many plus-sized athletes, the GS—once underway—moves with uncommon, even otherworldly, grace and agility. As Ray (my sales guy at MAX) said, “they ride much smaller than they look.” He was not wrong. The second you’re underway, the size and weight disappears, and all you’re left to do is ride.

The GSA is also a technological tour de force, with almost all the features you’d expect in a new, modern car, minus the two additional wheels. It is also almost as large.

I won’t bore you with all of its acronym-laden wizardry, but here are a few noteworthy magic tricks that have dazzled me, starting with Adaptive Height Control.

The bike is T A L L. Like Victor Wembayama tall. But it knows that, so it electronically raises and lowers itself with invisible precision, when you first climb aboard (for which it lowers itself), take off (when it raises itself), and when you come to a stop (when it lowers itself again). It even helps you get its fat ass onto the center stand. It’s like having your own private height concierge. And even though I’m 6’1”, I still appreciate it.

The GSA also has radar sensors front and rear, helping make the cruise control more adaptable to traffic than my generally short fuse (and attention span). Speeds up and slows down like magic, keeping a safe distance from whatever you’re following.

It also has radar-controlled emergency braking, so if a car or deer darts out and you have failed to notice (which is a fail), the bike automatically slams on its linked ABS brakes to stop (or at least radically decelerate) you. A potential lifesaver.

The windscreen (I put on the larger one) can be raised to entirely eliminate buffeting at highway speeds, creating a calm, quiet cocoon of air. Or you can lower it to cool your jets (and anything else), all with the push of a thumb-button.

The GSA even has an emergency SOS feature that automatically places a call in the event of a crash. Anot a call via your phone…the bike is actually sensing a tip over, and able to call for help.

Oh, and with a BMW or aftermarket NAV screen (it comes with an empty mount—I picked up a CarPuride to fill it), you can run AppleCarplay or AndroidAuto, and use Waze, Spotify, Google Maps, and receive/make calls without ever taking your hands off the bars.

Hey Siri! Did I say…I love it?

Figuring all this stuff out so operating it while riding was total second nature would take saddle time. So after 400 or so local miles on the GSA, I decided to take a little road trip.

Which brings me back to the Upper Penninsula in Michigan.

I’d always been curious about the U.P. (hereafter referred to as the Yoop). One of my kids went to U of M (Go Blue!) and one of her classmates from home played on their 2023 National Championship Football Team…

But despite having schlepped to Ann Arbor from Connecticut about 75 times, we never made it north of the greater Detroit metro area. Michigan continues another 300 miles above that…and that’s just to the Mackinac Bridge. The Yoop itself is like a whole second state-above-the-state, spanning another 100 miles up to Lake Superior, and 360 miles from end-to-end. It’s bigger than the entire state of New Jersey turned in its side.

So I packed up the GS and rode there.

But first, I had to take care of some break-in business, and stopped at MAX BMW North in Troy, NY, where they were kind enough to do my 700-mile run-in service, en route to Michigan (thank you MAX!)

Once my final drive splines were lubed and cylinders bathed in fresh hot oil, I headed west through upstate New York, which (if you’ve never been) is as un-like New York City as any place can be. Bucolic, agricultural, largely conservative, and with more than its share of 19th century mill and factory towns, it is not without some appeal and charm.

I overnighted in Seneca Falls, at the top of the middle finger lake (are they trying to tell me something?)—and grabbed some dinner downtown before crashing at a Hampton Inn.

Then westward on the Beast through Niagara Falls, and a shortcut Canada.

No shade on Canada, but it was a somewhat uninspired and un-lovely ride through Ontario, via Hamilton and London. But when I re-entered the US at Sarnia, things got interesting, when I was pulled aside by US Border Control as my bike had apparently set the, um, radiation sensors off.

I didn’t know BMW was using nuclear power on these things, but now it makes sense!

As I was told, this happens periodically when vehicles carrying “medical waste” (which I was not) are in traffic-line in close proximity to vehicles that are not. And I was apparently behind one such vehicle at the border crossing, and must have momentarily caught a whiff of radiation.

After assuring the nice US Border Control agents that I didn’t have a nuclear warhead in my pannier, and passing a second clean Geiger-counter review, I was pronounced “no nukes” and deemed free to re-enter the US and the great state of “Pure Michigan.”

I’d already ridden 300+ miles that day, and had no clear plan where I would call it quits for the night. So I Googled “nice small towns in Michigan,” and this one popped up. So I rode another 80 or so miles to reach Frakenmuth by dinnertime.

Turns out there’s a mini Bavaria smack dab in the middle of Michigan. For a BMW GSA, how appropriate.

The town came complete with half-timbered, exposed wood-frame buildings, peaked roofs, wurst shops, and biergartens. There is even the somewhat legendary Bavarian Inn at the center of it all, a dirndl- and lederhosen-themed resort complex and two-story restaurant, dominating downtown.

Die Gelande/Straße must eat dinner here, nein?

Other than the fact that neither the hostess (nor any waitress) seemed to know a lick of German, it was pretty authentic, right down to the weird, powdery stollen (fruit and nut bread) and buttered spätzle.

I went with the chicken schnitzel, which came mit alles die beilagen—sauerkraut, kartoffelsalat, et al—and washed it down with a pilsner from Munich’s famous Hoffbrau Haus (FWIW my hotel was about 1/4 mile away from here).

Then a little postprandial bimble…

Followed by another night recharging my body (and all my devices) at a Hampton Inn, home to itinerant agricultural equipment salespeople, soccer tournament families, and oddball ADV bikers looking for clean sheets and a free breakfast.

The following day, kitted up again to ride. But an aside:

What’s it like waking up in the middle of Michigan in June with a new BMW GSA, no plans or obligations, and a whole day (or two) to check out the famed Yoop?

Christmas in July.

Well, maybe more like 27% of Christmas. In June.

The bike was running like a dream, and I was starting to get the whole Carpuride/ Carplay/Nav thing dialed in. Nice to while away highway miles listening to the Guided By Voices back catalogue—all 100 albums of it (I’m a super fan).

It took another 200 or so miles just to get up to the Yoop, so I had time and albums aplenty to kill. I finally made Mackinaw City around noon, and will have to disappoint all you cult-Yoopers by saying that I found it to be a minor disappointment.

I know it’s the ferry embarkation point for the legendary and nostalgically-charming Mackinaw Island (no cars, only horses and bikes). But Mackinaw City itself resembled a Cape Cod or lower Maine tourist town, clogged with fudge, t-shirt and hoodie shops. And even Google Maps couldn’t seem to produce a restaurant worth recommending. I wanted to like it, but had a hard time understanding the appeal.

So I headed over the Mackinaw Bridge—a beautiful ride, to be sure— to finally alight on the famed Yoop.

First stop was for food, and I sought out one of the more famous and historical places on Route 2, the eponymous Lehto’s Pasties. FWIW, pastie rhymes with “last-y,” not the intuitional “tasty.”

But it WAS tasty AF. Especially dunked in their hot brown gravy.

It just might be the perfect food group: it’s flaky, beefy, oniony, potatoey, and gravy-y, all holdable in the palm of your hand. I’m going to recommend NASA consider these for all future spaceflights. Deelish.

I pressed on, taking Route 2 west along the northern shore of Lake Michigan (which I guess is technically the southern shore of the Yoop), and have to admit that it’s a bit strange and wonderful riding along—and through—giant sand dunes in the middle of the Midwest, far away from an actual ocean, with pine trees on one side, and teal green water on the other.

But as some friends have reminded me, the Great Lakes are basically freshwater inland seas. Complete with seagulls.

Since I wanted to see both the Yoop’s top and bottom “seas,” I headed north across the center of the Yoop, and up to the storied Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior.

Pictured Rocks is supposed to be stunning, if viewed from the water via boat. But as I was sequestered on Gelände, there actually wasn’t much to see. So I decided to get off the bike and poke around a bit. And wound up hiking this…

It became a modest workout in full armored riding kit.

But the view of the falls was worthwhile.

After the 168 steps back up, I bimbled around the shoreline for a bit (TBH there wasn’t much to see), then threaded my way back south through the midline of the Yoop. Woods, and farms, and more woods, and some more farms, and nothing rolling or particularly picturesque.

For the most part, and as an East Coaster, and from what I was able to see from the saddle of a motorbike, I’d say the Yoop most closely resembles the flatter areas of northern Maine, like around Presque Isle, land of potato farms (and home to McCain, the largest french fry producer in the world). Except here they have pasties, not fries.

To be perfectly honest, and after a day exploring, I couldn’t quite see what the Yoop’s enduring fascination is. It’s obviously got the appeal of the two Great Lakes and their shorelines. It’s certainly thickly forested and rural.

But it’s also relatively flat (as much as of the mitten of Michigan also is). It’s obviously vast and largely unspoiled, which I guess explains the appeal to hunters and campers. But for something like…hiking? Or interesting motorcycling? There’s nary a hill, bump, or elevation change (with the possible exception of the steep drop down to the Lake Superior shoreline, from what I saw). It’s like the walkable equivalent of motorcycle flat track racing. Not exactly a hiking or biking paradise.

So I came, I Yooped, and I departed.

I headed for the Mackinaw Bridge (a bit perilous on two wheel with its metal grating road surface—use caution if you ride it!), and after having made a day-long Yoop turn, began the long trip back home.

On my way down through Michigan, I had to make a pitstop in Ann Arbor to honor Big Blue….

And caffeinate at my favorite coffee nest.

It’s another 700 miles from Ann Arbor to home for me, so I decided to break the trip up into two days, with an overnight in central PA.

By now I was pretty well-acquainted with my new GSA, playing Spotify, delighting in the adaptable cruise control, and taking advantage of the heated seat and grips. Which were well worth having, as on the way out to the Yoop it was in the 90s, but on the way back, the temps were fighting to stay at 60. And on the GSA, I couldn’t have been more comfortable.

In all a great ride, an incredible new bike, and my U.P. curiosity-itch scratched. Not sure I’ll be running back, especially given all of the very similar delights New England has to offer, plus mountains and hills for riding (and hiking).

Yoop! There it is. But at least I got to add another state sticker to my pannier map 😉