Once you get past the impressive ESA suspension button, you'll find an equally impressive machine in the BMW R1200GS Adventure, writes Geoff Hill.
EVERYTHING WENT well for the first five yards. Until I stalled it right in front of the dealers. Giving Jim Hill a cheery wave to show that I had just been testing how much ambient torque there was in the engine at low revs, I started it up again and rode off, whistling Schubert's Trout Quintet in my helmet.
After that, everything went well for the next 50 yards. Until I couldn't work out how to cancel the indicator. Then accidentally switched the hazard warning lights on.
Sighing deeply, I pulled on to the verge, knowing exactly what had happened. I had been admiring Jim's demonstration of the ESA suspension button and hadn't being paying attention to the bit on cancelling the indicators.
The button in question, much in the manner of the lever on any ancient hydropneumatic Citroën, adjusted the suspension to whatever you fancied.
Except that in the Citroën whatever you fancied could only be up, down, or somewhere in the middle.
With the Beemer you can, at a touch, set it for one rider, one rider with luggage, two-up, two-up with luggage, off-road, and going up really scary mountains.
Even better, within each category you can also set it for normal, sport or comfortable, depending on whether you're pottering, raking about like Rossi or bouncing along an Albanian B-road avoiding potholes filled with sheep.
I'm sure, in fact, that if you looked hard enough, you'd find a setting which would enable you to carry 17 members of the Royal Signals Display Team in an inverted pyramid while going over speed bumps at 90mph. However, none of this information was of any use to me whatsoever at that moment, sitting by the roadside looking at two indicators flashing in perfect harmony.
It was all my own fault for slagging Ewan and Charley in The Road to Gobblers Knob. At least they'd got their bikes around the world. I couldn't even get it to the Sandyknowes roundabout.
After some thought, I switched the engine off to see if that would reset everything. Then I couldn't get it started again. Then I remembered that Jim had said you needed to give it a couple of seconds to let it work through the pre-start checks.
It was then I noticed the switch on the right handlebar with the cross through the indicator sign. I rode off and not a moment too soon.
First impressions? BMW has done a lot of work since the 1150cc incarnation of this bike. They've increased the tank size to 33 litres, giving a whopping range of 300 miles; bumped the bhp up from 85 to 99; increased the torque by 18 per cent and decreased the weight by 30kg in the standard version.
The result: impressive oomph and extreme chuckability; to the extent that when I took a spin up the north coast with Paddy Minne, the world-famous Franco-Belgian motorcyclist who'd ridden from Delhi to Belfast with me on an Enfield, I actually left him behind for the first time ever.
"You're getting a bit fast in your old age," he said archly when we stopped for coffee and a bacon roll. "It's not me, it's the bike," I said.
And it was. It says a lot for the Adventure's power, supremely comfortable riding position and stability that I felt as confident hurling it around corners in the wet as in the dry, and that even after a day riding in torrential rain, I was sorry to park it that night.
Or maybe I was just sorry to stop playing with that amazing ESA button, which meant that in an instant you could set the bike up for the road conditions ahead.
Not to mention an information button which displayed average mph, mpg, range, tyre pressures and temperature.
Different bikes come with their own individual fantasies, and with the Adventure, it is this: that you are overcome with an overwhelming urge to hop on it and nip down to the shops for milk.
And then an even more overwhelming urge to ride right past the shop and not stop until you get to Vladivostok.
FACTFILE
Performance:1170cc; 8v Boxer twin; six gears; 99bhp; 85ft/lb; top speed: 130mph; 1/4-mile acceleration: 12.5 seconds; frame: tubular steel; brakes: twin 300mm disks; weight: 223kg; seat height 890mm;
Fuel consumption:41mpg
Price:€16,046 for base model (£9,995 in North).
Test bike supplied by Charles Hurst BMW Motorrad.
Dealers in the Republic are: Joe Duffy, Exit 5 M50, North Road, Dublin 11, 01-864 7777; Maddocks, Fassaroe Glen, Bray, Co Wicklow, 01-286 8418 and Kearys, Kinsale Road Roundabout, Cork, 021-483 6900.