The Nov/ Dec 2017 issue of Canadian Biker has been mailed to our subscribers and is available on newsstands across Canada.
On the cover is BMW’s ode to the cruiser in the guise of the K1600B. It has been almost twenty years since BMW stunned the world with the R1200C cruiser and this bike, while not as dramatic perhaps as that earlier entry, is a production version of the Concept 101 cruiser and brings BMW back into the cruiser fold – sort of. The underpinnings are certainly worthy as the machine comes to the road courtesy of BMW’s luxurious K1600GT with all of its silky smooth six cylinder prowess. How does that translate into the new bagger? Our man Bertrand Gahel travels to the Tennessee to give K1600B bagger a try where he also learns to remember where he is riding.
Have you ever wanted to push your offroad skills just a little further than you now can? Did you want to ride up the side of a mountain on both one and two wheels? Did you want to see the summit from the seat of your saddle? Some of those thoughts and desires must have occurred to Kevin Kroeker when he signed up to attend Chris Birch’s offroad clinic in Squamish. Who is Chris Birch and why is he having offroad clinics in Squamish? Chris is a New Zealander with a long and storied career in offroad racing including the Dakar and he was holding clinics across the country and we were lucky enough to get one in BC. The motto of his clinics? “Say no to slow” which it turns out pretty much summed things up.
Quite by accident we run into four women who have fallen for the Indian Scout. What about Indian’s cruiser has attracted the attention of these women? Each has a different motivation for riding but each appreciates something about the nature of Indian’s Scout model. We speak to them about the machines they selected and what they did with them.
Our travel story in this issue features our Art Director John Skipp and his eventful journey to Sturgis this year – so eventful that for this story he didn’t even make it out of British Columbia (that’s okay as we have some great riding). The stop-over during his extended BC segment is the Rider’s Ranch – a motorcycle enthusiast campground not far from the town of Creston, BC and, if you listen to him, close to that mythical spot called Motorcycle Paradise or perhaps that was the open air saloon in the campground .
We have a stunning custom in this issue that began life as a 1979 Suzuki GS1000 but with the help of some very skilled craftsmen at Old Motorcycle Shop in Calgary, donor parts from various modern and not so modern motorcycles and a very unique vintage tank becomes a unique new ride with even more attitude than the original.
What else? Well we have several of the more interesting bikes being introduced for 2018, tips about how to handle the not so nice parts of touring (bugs, lightning strike, tornado, that sort of thing), Nancy finishes up her extended sojourn into south America, Robert Smith looks at a BSA-Velocette hybrid and we lend extra space to several gratuitous action shots to end our year.
Enjoy!!
