Pacific Coast Photo Gallery: The Wrong Way Home
Last summer a chance email from an old friend in Southern California with “barn find” in the subject line sparked a series of events that culminated in a full blown motorcycle adventure.
This fly-and-ride started with a manic marathon garage session to get the bikes road ready; and then spun into a pipe-dream bucket list trip up the Pacific Coast on two iconic vintage motorcycles.
Attached to that original email were photos showing a dusty pair of orphaned air-cooled BMW “S” bikes, languishing in a warehouse in the arid desert foothills of the Ortega mountains in Southern California.
These were two of BMW’s most iconic production models from the halcyon 1970s: a '74 R90S, and a '77 R100S—both first year models; both bought new and lovingly maintained by the same original owner, who kept them registered and roadworthy until his dying day in early 2021.
After connecting with the woman who had inherited these bikes from her best friend of 50 years, it became evident that the 20k and 35k odometer readings on the two bikes were, in fact, too good to be true.
The previous owner had at least 700,000 registered BMW miles under his belt, and more than 350k was split between these two classics.
Instead of the face-value mileage, the R90S had somewhere nearing the quarter-million mile mark. The ruby red R100S odometer had turned over, too, to 135k miles.
Instead of shipping the bikes home, the apparent mileage of the bikes basically amounted to a dare to ride them home, and the idea of a double-header fly-and-ride began to percolate.
But instead of riding them home—a long slog across country back to the East Coast—we decided to look north, and take these two 50-year-old sport touring thoroughbreds on a modest moonshot mission to navigate the entire length of the U.S. west coast.
Thanks to the essential BMWMOA anonymous book (IFYYK), this budding fly-and-ride idea soon found a patron saint when a retired yacht captain living in Oceanside, California, answered a phone call from an unknown number, entertained a wild proposition, and after considering for a day, generously agreed to offer up his spacious hillside home garage for storage and workspace. (Will, you rule!)
After a few near all-nighters of recommissioning work—flushing brake fluid, motor and drive oils, replacing critical seals, fuel lines, batteries and tires, the bikes were just about ready for the road.
But not before a second trip to California to do some fine tuning, with some help from the Airheads Beemer Club, which mustered an ad-hoc Tech Day with its Southern California chapter, which resulted in a few intrepid members showing up to Will's garage for an afternoon of helping wrench on and pore over the bikes.
Special thanks to member Bob Hardacker, who insisted we go through the wheel bearings, which led to discovering a nearly spun race in the 220,000-mile R90S that required replacement before we safely set off.
Finally on the last weekend in September we departed from San Diego county, with a target set on Cape Flattery on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State—the furthest navigable northwest point in the USA. The route was simple: follow the Pacific Coast Highway to its terminus north of San Francisco, and then continue on 101 along the coast until we ran out of country.
Spoiler alert: we made it.
*We in this case being myself, Chris Lesser, self-appointed chief adventure officer at Union Garage; and my mercenary copilot Dave Dunn, who to his everlasting credit committed to this trip by booking a one-way ticket to San Diego with just a few weeks notice, and practically zero BMW Airhead experience.
Luckily, he's got plenty of other riding experience, on road and off. If you were around the shop in 2019 you may remember we helped sponsor Dave's amateur run at the Baja 500.
Want to see some epic video evidence of the trip up the Pacific Coast? So do we!
The project is almost out of editing. We accidentally shot too much footage, on two Insta 360 cameras, multiplied by 8 days, not even counting Dave's drone or DSLR, and our very patient editor friend is just about finished making sense of it all.
Until then, the best catalog of the trip existing in the saved story on Instagram, where we were live posting from the road.
AND - as of this week there’s also now an audio interview about the trip, thanks to the excellent Airheads 247 Podcast.
And below is a smattering of favorite photos from the trip.
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