BMW Performance Riding Center

It's my birthday and I'll ride if I want to. Not very original but neither are birthdays and I've never much cared for them either. I do love to ride though and when my lovely wife Deya surprised me with a ticket and a three day tour out of the BMW Performance Riding Center in Greenville South Carolina... I was impressed.

It takes about 12 hours to fly there but was totally worth it. I got to pick my own bike, F800GS with TKC-80's and a tank full of fun. We started out in a small group about seven and did some training on the first day, simple but valuable stuff like panic stops on dirt and moving independently of the bike.


After that it was on the road, the staff and riders, some new and some old, pounding down road and dirt combined.

I've been down some beautiful pieces of road in my 20+ years of riding but the combination of finely engineered roads, dirt and scenery the staff picked out for the route was marvelous, good job guys. It really helps to be riding with experts and the folks at BMW are some of the best instructors in the world.

I won't go into detail about the trip except to say it's worth it and I'd consider it as a great vacation event if you only have a week. Greenville, SC is a nice place too. BMW also offers other courses that are worth their weight in twisted metal so check it out if you have a chance. http://www.xplorgs.com/


If you want to see some fabulous pictures check out the instructors site, Ray Helms, great guy and takes some fine photos. Try to find me in the video, I'll be the fellow trying to attach myself to the back of Rays bike. http://www.rayhelms.com/


After the course I'm more excited to ride than ever before and super impressed with the kind of throttling my 800 can take. I was banging around corners dragging the pegs with knobbies on, I can't believe it, outstanding! I even ran out of gas on the highway, it's a good story so I'll tell it.

We were heading back towards our mystery hotel for the night but first we had to get fuel. The staff had mapped out the route well enough so that everyone would get from point to point without fuel issues. at one of the stops prior to the fueling I mentioned I was getting low. They checked a few other bikes and mine seemed to have extra miles on it. They said they'd get it checked out back at the shop but we all had enough fuel for the trip, as they had calculated. As luck would have it we were about 15 minutes to the petrol station when I ran dry. They couldn't figure out at first how they had miscalculated the miles until one of the other guests said, "The extra miles are probably from his back tire spinning all the time...lol..". I admitted that might have added up, probably didn't help that I was riding her like I stole her, high RPM's and not to mention I was going so hard I backtracked and did a few routes twice..hahah.. You know sometimes it's just so good you have to turn around and do it again.

In all I'm grateful for the trip, the people there and the staff. I hope another opportunity comes up for me to do that one again.