Welcome to the twokguy website!
I am an American living and working in Serbia, and I have been riding motorcycles for nearly 40 years. My first motorcycle adventure was a Trans-Africa ride with two friends in 1973. We started out in Kinshasa, Zaire and rode all the way to northern Burkina Faso, before heading back south to Accra, Ghana and ending our riding adventure there. On this ride I was on a Yamaha 100cc two-stoke single, and I did not have much in the way of extra spares and equipment on the bike with me. We did not even carry any additional gasoline on the bikes, so needless to say it was quite an adventure.
On returning to the US after this African trip I bought myself a 250cc BSA single, and had that bike for about two years. I painted the tank with the British flag, so the bike stood out in a crowd. Eventually one of the valve guides started rattling, so I sold that bike and did not have a bike for a few years after that. In 1978 I was moving to Ghana, and I expected to be there for a few years, so I shipped a 1978 Yamaha XS 500 twin to use while I was there. It was a nice bike, and it was a good looker. I did some riding in Ghana with this bike, but the roads were not very good, and the daytime temperatures were very high, so I did not put that many miles on the bike. I sold it in Ghana before returning to the US in 1981.
When I got back to the US I bought myself another Yamaha, this time an XS 750 triple, with a drive shaft. I enjoyed this bike quite a bit and even took some relatively long rides on it. I rode it in New England (I lived in Connecticut) between 1981 and 1985, and then put it in storage in 1985 when I moved to Rwanda. I did not have a bike with me in Rwanda, so for the five years I was there (1985 - 1990) I did not do any riding. When I moved back to the US in 1990, I got my XS 750 out of storage, and began riding again.
For a long time I had wanted to purchase a BMW motorcycle, because my fellow riders on the African trip were avid BMW fans and they convinced me that BMWs were the best bikes around. In 1993 I decided to get myself a BMW so I began looking around for a nice used one. I rode a couple of airheads (the classic opposed twins) but found them to be relatively tame and in most cases the seat height was a challenge for me. Eventually I started looking at the "K" bikes, which were BMW's answer to the modern multi-cylinder Japanese bikes of the day. The K bikes had gotten good reviews, and they seemed to be modern, dependable and good looking.
I rode a K75S at one point, and I really liked the bike (it was smooth, fairly quick, and it looked good), but I could not put up with the riding position. It had cafe racer handlebars and that meant that the rider would be crouched over, holding himself up with the wrists, and I could only ride comfortably for 15 or 20 minutes like that. I eventually found a "naked" 1985 K100 (no fairing, just a plain bike) and found that to be much more usable for me. I bought the bike in mid-1993 and I have owned it ever since. While I am in Serbia now, my original K is still in the garage in Minnesota, waiting for when I get back to the US. I have put about 30K miles on the bike over the years, and I even had it in Romania with me while I was living there from 1995 to 2001. So, this bike has been across the Atlantic three times already.
When I moved to Serbia I decided not to bring my K bike with me, but instead I planned to purchase another bike here in Europe and use it while I lived over here. I knew I wanted to get another BMW, and my focus was on early model K bikes, very similar to the K bike I have in Minnesota. A friend here in Belgrade helped me browse the web sites for available bikes, and eventually I chose a 1985 K100RS which was being sold by a BMW dealer in Austria. I paid 2,200 Euros for the bike in January of 2009, and my friend arranged for it to be shipped to Belgrade while I was home for a quick visit in the US. Buying another '85 K bike has worked out well for me because I have a lot of parts and other goodies that are specific to these early K models (such as a lowered seat) which I brought out to Serbia to use with this new bike.
I spent a couple of months checking the bike out and cleaning it up, and on April 1st, 2009 I was ready to roll. I took my first motorcycle ride in Serbia the first weekend in April, an I have not stopped since. Over the course of 2009 I completed 18 "rides", and you will find my Ride Reports on this web site. In 2010 I have not made as many rides as in 2009, because my wife was still in the US until June 2009 and I had a few months on my own to get out and ride. None the less, I have taken about 15 rides in 2010, and you will find Ride Reports on most of these rides on this web site as well.
The biggest adventure so far was the ride I took with two other BMW riders to the Transfagaras Route over the Carpathian mountains in Romania in July of this year. This is a spectacular road, and it was a real nice motorcycle trip for the three of us. I have a typical Ride Report for this ride here (in pdf format) as well as a 12 minute video presentation that my fellow rider Milos put together.
I hope you enjoy my reports and videos, and if you are a rider, be sure to keep the rubber side down!
Jim Herne