A few of you have asked me about the R100GS that I had for sale. Yes it sold, but there's a background story and I've been asked by a couple of folks on the forum to share it. So here's my story about the "Ghost Bike".
My wife and I called the '93 R100GS the “ghost bike” but it was occasionally referred to as "Dad". Seems like almost every time I rode it something would happen to me, usually negative. On a trip to Tennessee in October ’08 the starter quit working and I had to get a trailer ride home from Memphis. (Thanks Steve Clark, President of the RAMS BMW club!) Last year, on a trip to Lake o the Pines in October, I had a tip over and bruised my hip pretty badly. Theresa said that it looked like the shape of Africa. (Shades of things to come?) I had purchased a new Avon front tire from Bruce Davidson but it never would stay inflated even after multiple times to remount it. Until I dosed it with about a quart of Slime if would keep leaking down. On our annual vacation trip in June this year, I had a low speed high side when I hit a patch of sand on the road, and ended up with a broken collar bone. There were a few lesser incidents but you get the idea. I've been riding for 40 years and never had any issues or accidents on any of the other bikes, only on "Dad".
It got the reputation as the “ghost bike” because the previous owner had been killed in a head on automobile crash about 20 miles west of Albany TX on Hwy 180 in ’04. When I picked up the bike from his son in ’07 after closing the deal, we were loading it up and when I lifted one of the side bags and it was really heavy.
“Hey Adam, what’s this big cracker tin in the side case?”, I asked
him. He looked at what I had in my hand and yelled “OMG, there’s Dad! I forgot where I had put him.” It seems that his father had been cremated after the accident and Adam had put the cracker tin urn in the side case. Then he said to me “Dad really loved this bike and I couldn't think of a better place to keep him.”
Well like they say in the infomercials “but wait, there’s more!!!” I had fitted some aluminum panniers, Happy Trails or some such. I felt like a little more storage room would be nice to have for our longer camping vacations. On Saturday, June 11 we saddled up early and headed west, me on the GS and Theresa on her R1100R. We were on our way to Sand Hills State Park in Monohans and then on to Carlsbad Caverns and northern New Mexico. That first day of our vacation trip in June we were heading west on, you guessed it, Hwy 180, and about 20 miles west of Albany I looked in my rearview and couldn’t see Theresa behind me on her R1100R. Thinking she had seen an interesting photo op, I turned around and headed back and there she was on the other side of the hill walking along the side of the road picking up all manner of items. What the hey?? It turned out that the right side pannier had come loose and broken open on the highway scattering things. We found everything except the lid. Coincidence that it happened in the same general area as the previous owners fatal accident? Probably. Spooky? Damb right it was.!!
Then the next day when I broke my collar bone on the high side, I said that’s it. I’d been trying to decide which bike in the herd to sell anyhow and that made the decision easy. I posted an ad on the BMW MOA flea market, and also on our club web site. It's not the best time of year to sell a bike but I had several interested parties but nothing too serious until I received an email from a guy that said he lived in Africa and would be in the area in a few days. As it turned out he and his wife are expats that live in Morocco and teach at the American school there. They were home on annual leave and visiting his brother in Plano. He wanted a GS to ship back to Morocco. He came by the house the other night wearing shorts, a tank top and flip flops and I thought, this guy can't be serious. But, he liked what he saw, and bought it on the spot. Changed into his ATTGAT and rode off into the East.
I sure hope that "Dad" likes it in Africa . (Unless he’s taken up residence in another one of my bikes in the garage!)
ps to the story - now my R1100S has developed a strange fuel leak for no apparent reason. Cue the Twilight Zone music...mwahahahaha!!
