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Soon we will be 20


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From a post by Leslie on the 10th anniversary.

 

May 31st 1998 marks the earliest iteration that we can find of our founder, Cary Littel's BMW RT Resource Pages.

 

We'd like to celebrate that by inviting you to share your beginnings with the site, special impressions or great stories that you have to spin here around our virtual campfire.

 

This invitation goes out to everyone. We hope that if you're lurking out there, you'll step out of the shadows too.

 

We'd also like to ask the "Old Timers" to chime in with some site history that will give us a sense of all of the rides, meetings and stories that have contributed to the greatness of this community.

 

Ten Years is a good, long time on the Web.

 

Let's party!!

 

Where does the time go?

 

Looking forward to stories, pictures, half-truths, lies, embellishments etc about the last 20 years.

 

Anyone here been a member since it started??????

 

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The ones who have are probably now or nearly too old to remember ;)

 

Pretty close...it's hard to say it's absolutely the gospel, but the system lists me as #54. I caught the fever for an RT within a few weeks of Cary establishing the website, and joined right away. I bought my brand new RT in spring of 1999.

 

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Lone_RT_rider
I bought my brand new RT in spring of 1999.

 

For me, the new RT came in fall of 1999. I found Cary's website not long after that and joined immediately. I also found the BMW Touring Club of Detroit about that time frame. I buried myself in BMW riding culture and loved ever minute of it. My riding experiences and the friendships I have made and kept formed a good part of my life over the past 20 years. I am truly grateful for all the friends I have made here.

 

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Shawn

 

Edited by Lone_RT_rider
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I joined in April shortly after buying my new 2002 RT. Started lurking and then found out about this thing called an "Unrally" that was happening a few months later in my own back yard. So, I sez to myself, "Self, maybe you should go check out this unrally thing!" So I did. And that was the first time I'd ever been around the Hell's Angels. We have the Sons of Silence and the Bandidos here but not the HA. Regardless, it was a very fun time and an incredible introduction to a great group of folks, many of whom I consider friends to this day. And ten years later I got to plan and run an unrally!! :facepalm:

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I was also at the un-rally in Gunnison. The Hells angels were there which seemed to have sucked all the State Police into Gunnison which left us the roads to ourselves. We used them all at speeds which were somewhat illegal, we rode them like we owned them! Black Canyon Creek Road seemed better then the Dragon, with the exception that a miss was off a cliff, not into a forest, the Million Dollar Highway just an exercise in cornering, it just felt like all was right with the world. I had just came back from 3 days in the Kevin Schwanz school at Road Atlanta, so I was on my "A" game" At those speeds, there was not a lot of room for a "B" game! When we left there, I traveled back with Hannabone and some other crazy guy who was a wizard at moving through traffic as though traffic and speed didn't exist! As we sailed through the back roads of Kansas, I noticed what looked like white paint on Hannabone's tire, when we stopped for gas, we discovered that he was through the tread to the core, with another 300 miles to go! Crazy man said, don't worry, its only a rear, if it blows you will just feel it shimmy! Off we went at illegal speeds, but Hannabone, after a fashion, wasn't comfortable and slowed way down, then we stopped at a dealer and an overnight to get a new tire. All was good again and off we went. I left Des Moines and rode the 975 miles straight through in 12 hours, a great time and good memories.

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Joe Frickin' Friday
Pretty close...it's hard to say it's absolutely the gospel, but the system lists me as #54.

 

For anyone with a registration date of 7/28/2000, I wouldn't trust that number to indicate sequence; I think that for all of the early members, things got a bit scrambled during one of our software migrations.

 

Speaking of which, like Shawn and Mike, I'm in the pre-7/28/2000 crowd. My story goes like this:

 

In Fall '98, I was finishing up grad school. One day a friend who had recently defended his dissertation was celebrating with a cookout in a local park, and our lab manager showed up on his antique Triumph motorcycle. I was mostly kidding when I asked if I could take it for a spin around the block, and was plenty surprised when he threw me the key. The last time I had ridden was nearly a decade earlier, when I was just a teenager tooling around the neighborhood on my dad's Honda 450. The Triumph joyride was fun, and the next day a friend and I started poking around the web, looking at various motorcycles. Eventually we landed on BMW's website, and my eyes locked onto this:

 

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It was love at first sight. And the more I read about it, the more deeply I fell for this magnificent horse. Fuel injection? ABS? An electric windscreen? Unique colors like Glacier-Green, and Opal-Blue Metallic? Stunning. I obsessed over it, to the point that in my spare time I tediously traced over that image using CAD software, creating a peculiar artistic rendering:

 

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I was still a poor grad student at that point, but I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I would be getting one of these bikes.

 

Just as soon as I got a job. :grin:

 

Fast forward a few months, to February '99. I started my professional career in the middle of that month, and a week later I was in the showroom of the local BMW dealer straddling the bike of my dreams, an R1100RT. I continued digging up information, and looking at other bikes as well, like Honda's ST1100 and Kawasaki's Concours. Nothing could hold a candle to the RT. In the end, for financial and romantic reasons (see below), I ended up flying to the east coast to buy my new RT from Morton's in April 1999. This was the happy day:

 

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My girlfriend at the time (well, her parents) lived nearby in Maryland, so this was especially convenient. She actually drove me to the dealership for the purchase. She took this picture of me in front of her parents' house, shortly before I began the ride back to Michigan:

 

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With only a couple of short seasons of riding on a small bike in my distant past, it could be argued (and some did) that jumping onto a 600-pound, 90-horsepower rocket sled for a multi-state journey was not the smartest choice. But somehow I made it home intact, with only one minor mistake along the way: with less than 100 miles on the odometer, I attempted a U-turn from a standing start in third gear and stalled the engine, forcing me to gently set the bike down onto on engine guard. :dopeslap: Happily, there was no visible damage. :Cool:

 

Sometime that spring – not sure if it was before or after I bought the bike – I found Carey's RT Resource Pages, which eventually became BMWRT.com, which eventually became the more inclusive BMWST.com. I Hadn't met any of these people, but enjoyed discussing how to deal with the various quirks of the bike. Along the way I made my own contributions to the site's FAQ list, starting with how to protect the paint in vulnerable areas.

 

That summer I rode to visit my parents in Minneapolis. I took the scenic route northward through Michigan:

 

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I stopped to visit my friend in Houghton (the one who had hosted that cookout the previous fall), and we went for a nice ride through the Keewenau peninsula, taking in the sights along the way:

 

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The night before arriving at my parents' house, I called to let them know I had a surprise for them. See, I never actually told them about the motorcycle. :eek: They had no idea what the surprise was, and later said that they thought maybe I'd grown a mustache or something. :rofl: When I arrived at their house the next day, my dad, being a former rider himself, was plenty excited to see the bike. An hour later, my mom arrived home from work, and when I saw her lock eyes on the bike, she instantly developed an “oh dear god” expression. She worried about my safety – I guess that's what moms do, isn't it? – but over the years I think she appreciated my attitude toward safe riding, with good gear, good situational awareness, and various conspicuity enhancements. And more importantly, she expressed an appreciation toward what the bike did for me by connecting me with all of you yahoos. :wave:

 

That first summer out of grad school was taken up almost entirely by exploration of local roads, and a few longer trips, on the RT. By the time the leaves started dropping off of the trees, I was intensely addicted. That winter, I began planning The Big Adventure for the next summer: a 3-week, 7,000-mile journey to California with Karen, my girlfriend at the time. In addition to destinations and routes, there was a whole lot of outfitting to do. We intended to camp most of the time, so I had to get the smallest, lightest gear I could find. That, and the biggest tankbag possible:

 

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We used every nook and cranny of space on the bike, and somehow we made it work:

 

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We rode through hot weather:

 

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And cold weather:

 

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And everything in between (thankfully not much rain). It was an awesome adventure.

 

In February '01, I got an email from someone in the Detroit area. Shawn said he was a BMWRT.com member (“Lone_RT_Rider”), and suggested we get together at the next Sunday breakfast with the BMW Touring Club of Detroit. And so we did, and we met again and again at many such breakfasts after that:

 

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And we went to a bunch of rallies in the area together:

 

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That summer, I made plans to do a Saddlesore 1000 ride in mid-September – as it turned out, just a few days after 9/11. A bit of a somber mood during the ride, but I managed to complete it while getting a decent night's sleep along the way. I got home at noon on a Saturday, and the following morning I was on my way to meet Shawn at another club breakfast when my alternator belt broke, just a mile from home. Holy crap, I was that close to scrubbing my SS1K. :eek:

 

Later that month a coworker invited me to join him and his friends for a track day at Grattan. No racing, no timing, no record-keeping, just ride your own ride without cops or cross traffic. I taped up my lights like a good boy, but I still felt out of place with all the crotchrockets around:

 

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Turns out we were fairly well matched. The other guys always launched past me on the long straight, but they were timid on the brakes at the far end. In contrast, the RT's ABS gave me the confidence to brake late and hard. It was a nice way to learn how hard you really could brake; the ABS lets you know where the limit of traction is without dumping you on your ass like a non-ABS bike. the RT's braking ability meant that I always shot past them before diving into the turn. :Cool:

 

It also meant that I was really cooking those brakes. I decided to call it a day when I braked hard for one turn, accelerated to the next, and then pulled the brake lever all the back to the bar with no braking at all. Yup, boiled ‘em. :eek: I managed to slow a bit with the rear brake while running off into the grass, and somehow kept it all upright until stopped.

 

Smokin' hot metal:

 

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In October, Shawn invited me to ride down to North Carolina with him. I had been eyeballing videos online of people riding an impossibly serpentine stretch of road called Deals Gap, and was excited to discover that it would be a part of our trip. I had seen some pretty curvy roads during my big California trip a year earlier, but that was 2-up and loaded for camping – not exactly a sporting configuration. Taking Deals Gap solo with a light load of cargo was awesome, eye-opening, enrapturing, and it was really just the gateway road; there was so much more ahead before we reached our destination on that trip.

 

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That was the first of many joint road ventures. Shawn recently introduced me to some friends as his “road wife”. An apt description, considering the tens of thousands of miles we've ridden together in the past 17 years. How many throttle bodies have we synced, and how many tires have we changed together, the hard way??? I love you, buddy. :wave:

 

In June '02, a whole mess of us cruised into Nashville, TN for one of the first Tech Daze events hosted somewhere other than the desert southwest. I've already posted recently about the Tennessee Taste, Tech & Trek, so I'll just leave you with that link. It inspired me and Shawn to host a Tech Daze in Michigan the following spring, and each of us has attended numerous other Tech Daze events in the years since then.

 

And of course in July '02, we had the first UnRally. UnRallies are hotel-centric these days, but back then we were all younger and much more into camping, so HQ was at the KOA campground in Gunnison. Before the event, I asked on the board if anyone was interested in riding from Boulder to Gunny with me. My description of my plans and riding style was so dry that at the end of it I promised that I really did have a sense of humor. Jake said “Oh yeah? YOU try reading that and getting Jack Webb's voice out of your head.”

 

I wrote back, “Hey, do I look like Joe Frickin' Friday to you?”

 

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Jake came back: “Call me crazy, but I do see a pretty strong resemblance:”

 

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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

 

And soon after, “Joe Frickin' Friday” became my member title – and eventually, my display name (most of the time).

 

Anyway, the first Unrally was awesome. We had Hell's Angels (Hi Knappy!), rock slides (Hi Raaaan!), and lunatic group rides (Hi Tommy!). It was fantastic to wake up in my tent in the morning and hear oilhead boxers zipping by on the frontage road or puttering through the campground. And of course, meeting all these faces we had only so far known as display names. When I first arrived, I heard a bunch of folks were hanging out at the A&W in town, so I zipped over there to check out the scene. I was promptly greeted by the woman in this pic, who introduced herself as “Paperbutt”:

 

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I introduced myself as “Mitch Patrie,” and the look she gave me said “sorry, no idea who you are.” So I tried my board name instead, “Joe Frickin' Friday” and she gave me a squeal of happy recognition and a great big hug. Kathy, if you're reading this, thanks for the warm welcome. :wave:

 

In addition to Kathy, I met the site's founder, Cary Littell:

 

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I also met the photobomber in the background of that pic. :wave:

 

I met the legendary owner of this bike:

 

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I met The Sock Monkey:

 

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And countless others:

 

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(Panoramic: click on this image to open full-screen shot in another window)

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And I got a chance to see first-hand what other people were doing to their RTs:

 

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In September 2002, Shawn, Rainy and I headed to South Haven, Michigan for a meet-up with the Chi-Town Crew:

 

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A few rules were bent:

 

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Good food and drink were shared:

 

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Where there's smoke, there's burgers:

 

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Raaaan, sentimental softie, appreciating a beautiful Lake Michigan sunset:

 

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A damn fine weekend was had by all:

 

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2003 saw the first instance of a twice-annual event in the southeast part of the US; it was “El Paseo” back then, but when it was handed off to new organizers it became the “Blue Ridge Rendezvous,” and then “START” (Spring Appalachian Riding Tour) and “FART” (Fall Appalachian Riding Tour). Along the way there have been dozens of other regional events, both east and west.

 

In 2004 David Baker, the owner of BMWST.com at the time, began promoting the “RidingSmart” curriculum, which included a modified version of the body English used by racers. Shawn and I were in one of the first classes that he held. A good deal of time was spent at the hotel on Friday evening and Saturday morning discussing technique before heading out to run the Cherohala Skyway while being observed and coached by his team of assistants. Prior to taking that course, I had a bit of a problem with maintaining adequate ground clearance during hard turns:

 

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After the course, touchdowns were very infrequent (it helped that the prominent aspects of the RT had already been worn down :grin:). I'm pretty sure Shawn's photo upthread was taken during that class, just like this one of me:

 

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Since that time, Shawn has served as an instructor during a few subsequent RidingSmart classes. Hopefully there are more to come in the future.

 

Perhaps one of the finest examples of camaraderie and supportiveness exhibited by the members of this site came in 2006, when Richard (BeniciaRT_GT-GT) set off from San Diego on a 50CC (that's 50 hours, coast-to-coast). This was the first time I'd ever heard of someone having their cell phone wired to their comm system: Richard posted his phone number, and invited people to call him while he was en route.

 

And OMG, we called the hell out of him. :grin: His phone routinely had calls coming in while he was still on the line with others. By the end of his first day, his voicemail box was full. The epic thread that developed as people posted real-time reports on Richard's progress has been moved to its rightful place in the Ride Tales That Last forum. If you've got a moment, it's worth browsing.

 

Over the years, we've lost some friends and allies, memorialized in The Ride Home. Each was a good friend to some of us, but some were good friends to all of us:

 

  • Cary Littell, the site founder, died in his sleep in 2014:
     
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    This was a guy so passionate about riding, and particularly about the R1100RT, that he devoted god-knows-how-many hours to starting and curating a website for total strangers to get together and talk about it. Per his vision, we on the admin team have worked hard to maintain this place as a civil and courteous environment that fosters a sense of community – an environment unique enough on the internet so that some others nicknamed us “Mister Rogers' Neighborhood” (and for a while, Carey's avatar was in fact a picture of Fred Rogers :rofl:). And now, here we all are:
     
    Met the man once at the first UnRally back in 2002, and had hoped to see him again someday. This website profoundly influenced the direction of my life when I first found it about 16 years ago; I owe him a debt of gratitude.
     
    Ride in Peace, Mister Rogers. :wave:

 

 

  • We lost Paul Mihalka (the owner of the “OLDFRT” bike up above) to cancer in 2013. Paul was…well, it's hard to find the words. Sometimes I think there was more than one of him, because no matter what gathering I went to, he was there. I thought it was a long way from Michigan to Torrey, but he routinely rode out there from Maryland, and he was twice my age. At 83, he had racked up at least 1.2 million lifetime miles, probably more; that's an average of 40 miles a day, every day! If you bumped into him at one of our get togethers, he was this guy, an ever-smiling senior ambassador of our sport:
     
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    OTOH, if you bumped into him 60+ years ago, then you were in Venezuela (I won't ask why) and “Pablo Mihalka” was passing you on his way to victory lane:
     
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    I have these pictures on my office wall, they're that cool. When people ask about them, it's my privilege to tell them I knew the man. You can read an article about his racing exploits here if you read Portugese, or here if you don't. Back then they called him “El Negro Vivas”, which Google says means “The Black Alive One.” :confused: Maybe “The Dark Creature” or “The Dark One” is a better fit. :grin:
     
    Paul announced his illness on February 28, and received a terminal diagnosis about a week after that, prompting an outpouring of tearful goodbyes and expressions of admiration and love from damn near everyone on the site:
     
    Shit. :(
     
    Paul, it's been an honor and pleasure to have known you - and I will surely regret not knowing you as well as some here. From what you've shared with us, it seems you've led and extremely interesting and rich life, and enriched many, many others along the way; I can only aspire to your example.
     
    I will miss you.
     
    A week later, he was gone, but not before delivering a heartfelt valediction (you are required to read this aloud in a thick Hungarian accent):
     
    Guys and gals, these loving messages are the most beautiful gift you could give me.
    I Love you all!

 

 

 

  • We lost Glen “Gleno” McIntosh to an inattentive driver in 2007.
     
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    He was 46 at the time, younger than I am now. As with Paul, it's difficult for me to find the words to describe Gleno. He had as much love and warmth for the people here as Paul did, but he expressed it…more noisily. With burning rubber, irreverent mischief, howling comedy, and impossibly delicious tri-tip for everyone. I didn't have much to say about him in the days after he died – it was hard to stop crying - but I offered this in a ride tale a few months later:
     
    My first two times at Torrey, Gleno was there. I never got to talk to him for very long, but he formed a huge part of the scene and feel of this place. His boisterous glee infected everyone around him, and even if he was clear across the parking lot, you could always hear his booming, husky baritone voice; and even if you couldn't quite make out the punch line of his joke from so far away, you always caught the peals of laughter afterwards, and it made you smile. :grin:
     
    Gleno's friends in the Sin City Sportbikes Club saluted his wild side with
    Our own Russel “Bounce” Bynum perfectly encapsulated Gleno's brotherly love

 

Torrey was near and dear to Gleno's heart, and so the Spring 2007 Torrey event was a chance for people to say their goodbye to him. I attended with Shawn and Rainy, and the experience as a whole inspired me to write one of my first long-format ride tales. You can find that one and several others of mine in the Ride Tales That Last forum, but the very first extended ride tale I wrote was hosted on my own personal website. It was about that big cross-country adventure back in 2000. Maybe not my best ride tale, but I still saved the pieces and stuck them in a PDF file you can find here.

 

Whoops, I've prattled on a bit long. Anyway, that's been my own meandering experience of this place. See you down the road. :wave:

 

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  • Like 1
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Lone_RT_rider

Just Brilliant my friend.... :)

 

How many throttle bodies have we synced, and how many tires have we changed together, the hard way??? I love you, buddy. :wave:

 

Love you too my brother.... :)

 

8 days until we start another ride tale. :Yes::revit:

 

Shawn

 

 

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Lone_RT_rider
The ones who have are probably now or nearly too old to remember ;)

 

Pretty close...it's hard to say it's absolutely the gospel, but the system lists me as #54.

 

How do we find out what number we are?

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Joe Frickin' Friday
The ones who have are probably now or nearly too old to remember ;)

 

Pretty close...it's hard to say it's absolutely the gospel, but the system lists me as #54.

 

How do we find out what number we are?

 

You buy a beer for a moderator, and they look it up for you (you're #117). Again, I don't think those early numbers mean a whole lot; I signed on before you, and my number is 181.

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Lone_RT_rider
. Again, I don't think those early numbers mean a whole lot; I signed on before you, and my number is 181.

 

Are you trying to say that a number is just a number?

:jaw:

 

That does not compute........ :rofl:

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You buy a beer for a moderator, and they look it up for you (you're #117). Again, I don't think those early numbers mean a whole lot; I signed on before you, and my number is 181.

 

I think Mitch wants free beer. Click on "Who's Online" on the tool bar, then click yourself. I think you can see it there.

 

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Thanks Mitch, for those of us who weren't around at the start, that helps fill in a lot of the blanks.

 

My first UN, was Gunnison II, I rode into the campground not knowing a soul, but got a big hug from Momma Hoon when I told her who I was. Those days we were still camping and the weather was great and the roads fantastic. I tried to keep up with some riders in front of me on the way to the Black Canyon, but was quickly left in the dust.

 

Meeting Paul was a real treat for me. He didn't know a stranger and made everyone feel welcome.

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Joe Frickin' Friday

 

You buy a beer for a moderator, and they look it up for you (you're #117). Again, I don't think those early numbers mean a whole lot; I signed on before you, and my number is 181.

 

I think Mitch wants free beer.

 

Actually I was just trying to slow down demand for our services. :grin: You're right, people can find out that number for themselves.

 

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Thank you Mitch for a great post and for all the long years of service to this community.

 

Thanks, Bernie, for stating so eloquently in one sentence my exact feelings. Such wonderful photo's......

Link to comment

 

You buy a beer for a moderator, and they look it up for you (you're #117). Again, I don't think those early numbers mean a whole lot; I signed on before you, and my number is 181.

 

I think Mitch wants free beer. Click on "Who's Online" on the tool bar, then click yourself. I think you can see it there.

 

Maybe if you are a mod. Doesn't show for me.

Link to comment

 

You buy a beer for a moderator, and they look it up for you (you're #117). Again, I don't think those early numbers mean a whole lot; I signed on before you, and my number is 181.

 

I think Mitch wants free beer. Click on "Who's Online" on the tool bar, then click yourself. I think you can see it there.

 

Maybe if you are a mod. Doesn't show for me.

 

Look directly above your avatar. #7854 Now you owe me a beer.

 

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Joe Frickin' Friday

For anyone who's interested in how this place used to look, The Wayback Machine has snapshots of the internet from, um, way back. It's not perfect - they don't have everything on the site from any given date, and sometimes it seems threads from later dates exist on earlier snapshots, but it's still interesting to browse and see what we used to be.

 

Here's all the snapshots they have of www.bmwrt.com, and here's one in particular from July 18, 2002. Click on the horn button to go to the list of forums. Here's a short but telling thread from that snapshot: How much time do you spend here? :grin:

 

Going back a little bit further, here's all the snapshots of www.bmwr1100rt.com, which is what Cary called it when he first started it. Here's one in particular from October 1, 1999. A link near the top of that page takes you to the "R1100RT BBS". It was a single forum back then, not the 30 or so that we have now.

 

How much we've grown from the seed that Cary planted...

Link to comment

 

You buy a beer for a moderator, and they look it up for you (you're #117). Again, I don't think those early numbers mean a whole lot; I signed on before you, and my number is 181.

 

I think Mitch wants free beer. Click on "Who's Online" on the tool bar, then click yourself. I think you can see it there.

 

Maybe if you are a mod. Doesn't show for me.

 

Look directly above your avatar. #7854 Now you owe me a beer.

 

Only one beer?

Link to comment
Joe Frickin' Friday
That was the first of many joint road ventures. Shawn recently introduced me to some friends as his “road wife”. An apt description, considering the tens of thousands of miles we've ridden together in the past 17 years. How many throttle bodies have we synced, and how many tires have we changed together, the hard way??? I love you, buddy. :wave:

 

No joke on those tires. Fresh rubber for Shawn, Rainy, and me before Spring Torrey 2004:

 

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Six tires, all done with tire irons. And at least a couple more sets each later in that season. Surprised our hands aren't just arthritic nubs of scar tissue at this point. :grin:

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Lone_RT_rider
Six tires, all done with tire irons. And at least a couple more sets each later in that season. Surprised our hands aren't just arthritic nubs of scar tissue at this point. :grin:

 

Yours aren't? :jaw:

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If all goes well, watch for an announcement soon of a BMWST.com 20th Anniversary shirt. Current plans are for a high quality 3-button golf shirt with an embroidered upper left chest area. Probably white stitching on a shirt as close to the blue on the BMW logo as I can find (If any of you artsy types actually know the Pantone color number for the BMW blue on the logo, I could use it).

 

It will be prepaid only. We don't want to have leftovers. The purchase window will probably run 3 months, with monthly shipping/deliveries. Likely later this year (after the Un and after Fall Torrey) That gives those who don't log on very often but who have been longtime members a chance to see the promo and to order.

 

Once they're gone, they will be gone. And while I don't mind making the website making a few bucks on each shirt to give us a little financing cushion, I'd rather just charge the actual cost plus shipping and put any potential profits back into a higher-quality shirt. Twenty years is a long time. I want these commemorative shirts to last. Be prepared. Maybe as much as $40 delivered. Could be a touch more. Or less. But they WILL be Limited Edition.

 

I will let everyone know.

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Been saying for years we needed a golf type shirt with a true embroidered logo ...

 

In for 2.

 

Price range not a problem. Heavy on the quality is good !! Dark Blue, Dark Tan or Red would be good :Cool:

Edited by chrisolson
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Probably white stitching on a shirt as close to the blue on the BMW logo as I can find (If any of you artsy types actually know the Pantone color number for the BMW blue on the logo, I could use it).

...

 

I've found that Pantone Process Blue is dang close to BMW blue

 

Here are the various formulas.

 

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Bill_Walker
If any of you artsy types actually know the Pantone color number for the BMW blue on the logo, I could use it

 

I'll check with RoadWolf. He's done a lot of BMW art (and has done shirts, too).

 

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beemerman2k

I'm member #31?! Unreal!

 

I remember back in 1996, while sitting on the can if you must know : :wave: I was browsing through a motorcycle magazine. There I saw it, an ad for the new BMW R1100RT. I was blown away! What a beautiful sport tourer! I knew then and there I'd own one someday.

 

Now, fall of 1999, I'm enjoying a ride through the Berkshires in Massachusetts when I came upon AJ's Cycle on Route 2 in Gill, MA. I told Al, the owner, how much I admired the look of the R1100RT. He literally tossed me the keys and said, "Be back in an hour". He didn't even know my name yet!

 

What a ride I enjoyed on the bike. Yep, done deal, this my next motorcycle.

 

So now I want to learn as much about this bike before my purchase, so I lurked here for months prior to actually joining. Bought my RT on June 23rd, 2000, joined this site a couple of weeks later.

 

[Linked Image]

 

 

Over the decades (!) I've met many people on this site that would prove to have a big impact on my life, my riding, and my thinking. Too many to name, but certainly EffBee is among them, as is Recourses (the prior site proprietor) and LesIsMore (another prior proprietor). Was even privileged to have met Cary Little at his dealership in San Rafael, CA back in July 2006.

 

I owe a lot to BMWST.COM (BMWRT.COM back when I joined). Thank you all for your contributions to this place as your life has had a huge impact on mine :thumbsup:

 

 

Edited by beemerman2k
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szurszewski

 

I remember back in 1996, while sitting on the can if you must know : :wave: I was browsing through a motorcycle magazine. There I saw it, an ad for the new BMW R1100RT. I was blown away! What a beautiful sport tourer! I knew then and there I'd own one someday.

 

 

Hey - we're practicly neighbors - I'm 11,311, and it's got a 31 right there in the middle. Well almost the middle. Anyway it's a palindrome and that's cool.

 

I am always amused when people talk about how much they love the 1100RTs very unique aesthetic, so maybe I'll share my first RT sighting too:

 

I was just about to turn 21 and was in WA for a few weeks to visit, living at the time in Sitka, AK. I was looking for a bigger bike to take back up with me intent on touring on it the following summer - at the time I had use of my dad's Yamaha Speciall II (400cc). I was firmly in the camp of people who had no idea BMW made motorcycles. In fact, I didn't really know anything about motorcycles other than that I loved riding them (which is pretty much where I still am today!). Looking through the classifieds (the paper kind! remember those?) I found an ad for a BMW - some airhead or other (though I didn't of course know that at the time), but by the time I got in touch with the seller the bike was gone.

 

Intrigued by this idea of a BMW motorcycle - a bunch of people I went to high school with drove BMW cars, and they were all, well I can't say what I thought they all were on here because this ain't ADV, but I thought it might be cool to have a BMW bike which none of them had - I figured out there was a local BMW dealer. Tacoma BMW - tiny little place out by the army post and air base wedged in between the payday loans, tattoo parlors and strip clubs. Seemed pretty cool. Out front when I drove up there was a '78 R60/7, a K75s and an airhead GS. Oooh - the GS looked cool. Oh - the GS is $4000 (I know; should have bought it). The /7 and the K75 were both around $2k and I ended up with the /7 thinking it would be easier to work on...but that's another story.

 

Inside the shop were all the new bikes, and I very distinctly remember walking in and seeing a brand new - would have been a '97 I guess - RT. Wow - I thought - that is the ugliest bike I've ever seen and I can't imagine ever wanting to ride a barge like that. .... I'm pretty sure it was the same Glacier Green as the '96RT I ended up with about ten years later. (Started out wanting a GS that time too...)

 

It's by far the best riding bike I've ever owned, and I loved every mile I put on...but I still think they're way, uh, funky looking!

 

 

 

And if you're still reading, I have a follow up point about how great I think this place is: we have TOTALLY different opinions on the RT and probably lots and lots of other stuff too, and we found this site in different ways, but we still both (all!) found it, and it became a part of our lives the same way. How cool is that?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I was waiting for my new 2001 RT to arrive. On a business trip in Maryland I stopped into a BMW dealership and met a guy named Paul. Truly was lucky to meet Paul and followed his advice to join BMWRT.COM later that day from my hotel room. My first get together was UN1. As I was climbing up a hill I was passed by a rider going at least twice as fast as I was. Paul waited for me at the next pull out. I am lucky to have known him and so many others on this site.

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