My 2013 BMW R1200RT Makes It Home

March 3, 2013Ricardo Perez

2013 90th Anniversary R1200RT

My new bike, my 65th birthday gift from my wife, is finally home. I ordered it over a month ago while it was still in the motherland, but it gradually made its way across the Atlantic to the BMW warehouse in New Jersey or thereabouts and to Austin's Lone Star BMW on Friday morning March 01, 2013. My wife and I towed up my motorcycle trailer on Saturday, arriving at the dealer at 4:57pm, with a whole three minutes to closing.
It was a real adventure getting to the dealer as I decided to get off the stop-and-go bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate Hwy 35 and take Red River Street, a parallel urban street, as it was faster than I35. That was true until I got to the Longhorn Stadium when a DPS Trooper stopped me and proceeded to wave through the Longhorn marching band followed by a few thousand fans right in front of us. By then I figured it was useless to get upset so I recorded the band as they marched by. Anyway, I made it to Lone Star with plenty of time.
We loaded the bike and we were back on the road to Mission within 15 minutes. It was slow going between Austin and San Antonio, but we finally made it South of San Antonio and opened it up a little. The 660+ mile round trip had us home about 11:30pm; a long day. My wife, Irma, was a real trooper on the 12 hour tow. I had thought of spending the night in Austin, but couldn't bear the thought of having the bike sit in some lonely parking lot so we headed right back home. It was a good decision to trailer the bike home instead of riding it through all that stop and go I35 mess.
Of course, I was in a hurry to get out of Austin and through the 5 o'clock rush hour so I didn't even bother to start up the bike or test anything on it. I took it on faith that the good folk at Lone Star BMW had checked everything out. When I entered the dealership the bike was right next to Gary, my salesman, with a "SOLD" sign on it.
My brother and I unloaded the bike, checked everything out and took it down the street two blocks and back. It had 5 miles on the odometer when I took delivery of the bike. Next report will be on my first long ride coming up at the end of the week.