For our nomadic travels, the mode of transport is the first and foremost essential item! When the Biker Boy started thinking about bikes, he had a few criteria: It had to be an adventure bike, and it had to be strong enough to carry 2 people, plus gear. Preferably already registered in Botswana, and somewhere close by. I had zero feelings on the matter, being completely ignorant, so left it in his expert hands!
Yellow Bike
Amazingly, in early 2016, the perfect bike showed up, right here in our home town, so we took a leap of faith, and bought it!
Yellow bike – BMW 1150GS (2003 model)
After several thousands of kilometres were notched up on the yellow bike, the need was felt for a “donor bike” as trusty yellow was starting to need more and more attention. Living where we do, it’s really difficult to get spares and so this made good sense.
Silver Bike
A perfect candidate was located in South Africa, and we eventually imported it (a long story for another day).
The silver bike is the identical model and year of manufacture, with just one difference, being the GSA model.
The extra “A”, I learned, stands for Adventure!! What’s not to love about that?!
~ Adventure features are: a larger fuel tank, a higher suspension and bigger windscreen.
Apart from cool extras, it also turned out to be in better condition, therefore silver became The Bike, and yellow became the donor bike for a while.
Although silver bike is currently our first choice of nomadic partner, both are in excellent running order. Now Yellow only lends parts to Silver on a temporary basis until replacement parts can be sourced from South Africa!
Silver bike – BMW 1150GSA (2003 model)
Name & Gender?
Yes, if anybody is wondering, I tried my hardest to name the bike, and to ascertain any feelings as to its gender… however there was to be none of that frivolous stuff, and thus, it’s just known and loved as “Bike”, gender neutral!