A couple of years ago, I wrote a piece about how every serious motorcyclist should have a rat bike. I’ve also written about how surprisingly fun it can be to have a small, simple motorcycle for getting around, when you just want to jump on and go, with no thought of setting performance records or impressing anyone. Through a bit of good fortune, I’m currently embarking on an open-ended experiment of having some version of both, for the first time in years. And I think this is going to be fun.
Currently parked in my garage, next to my old 1997 Speed Triple and my not-so-new-anymore 2014 Honda VFR Interceptor Deluxe, is a rather battered and bedraggled 2019 BMW G 310 GS. If the scratches and scrapes and dents and bent handlebar didn’t clue you in that this bike has war stories to tell, then you might suspect it if you saw it, as I first did, and considered the Iowa plates it wears, the four annual stickers for off-road access in South Dakota’s Black Hills, and the layer of Black Hills dirt in every crevice. It came to me by way of storage in California, a truck ride to Pennsylvania, and now sits in my garage in western Massachusetts.
On dreary winter days like this, having something relatively small and light and designed to deal with sub-optimal traction conditions is the best kind of two-wheeler to have.
Back in 2016 when the BMW G 310 R (the street-focused predecessor to the GS version) first arrived in the United States, I was among the first to get to ride it at the press introduction in Southern California. The single-cylinder G 310 R, the smallest BMW, proved more broadly capable than I expected, able to keep up with SoCal freeway traffic well enough that it was an all-around usable motorcycle in the U.S. setting, not limited to being an urban runabout. But I never had a chance to ride the mini-adventure-bike GS version, which I felt was likely to be the more interesting iteration of the G line. Until this one fell into my path unexpectedly.
It’s owned by Comoto, parent company of RevZilla and J&P Cycles, where the Common Tread blog I edit resides. I don’t know the story about how it was acquired, but it must have happened at J&P in the pre-merger days, given the Iowa plate. The first I ever heard of the little GS was when my former colleague Jen Dunstan wrote an article about riding it at Get On! Adventure Fest in 2021. Jen’s an experienced and capable dual-sport rider, and she swears she never even dropped it once on the trail rides. But from the scratched bodywork to the dented exhaust cover to the bent handlebar, it’s clear that others did as the GS got plenty of off-road use and suffered several of the inevitable spills you’d expect on the Black Hills trails. Then (again, for reasons unknown to me) it was packed up with other gear and shipped to the RevZilla office in Southern California, without so much as a cleaning.
And there it sat.
My boss and pal at RevZilla, Spurgeon, was looking to do something with the bike, and he knew I’d be the one most likely to appreciate it and use it. So after a new battery, service to reverse the effects of more than a year of abandonment, and a replacement for the bent ABS ring on the front wheel, the GS was back in commission. So I rode it home from Philadelphia on a chill December day.
The first job, before I could safely ride the BMW home from Pennsylvania, was dealing with the battered brake light switch on the rear brake pedal. It was sticking, meaning the brake light was on all the time — in turn meaning I essentially had no functioning brake light, which is a great way to get rear-ended in traffic. I rigged up a temporary solution in Spurgeon’s garage, which is not yet organized following his recent move. Photo by Spurgeon Dunbar.
Since then, the weather has mostly kept me in the house, but the little that I’ve ridden the GS, I’m really enjoying having it, especially this time of year. As I wrote in my rat bike article, it’s liberating to have a motorcycle that didn’t cost a lot and you’re not overly concerned with how it looks. I never stop riding, despite the long winters where I live, but in the short days of December, if I’m just running to the hardware store, taking the VFR800 out on sloppy wet or salt-encrusted roads seems like overkill or abuse. But a rat bike? Like a battered G 310 GS? Perfect for the task.
In that previous article, I wrote about the best rat bike I’d ever owned, a 1989 Honda NX250 I bought cheap at a time when funds were tight and I had a daily commute to keep. It fulfilled the rat bike mission because it came pre-scratched and well used, but it also was just capable enough to handle the five miles of I-70 on my commute, light enough to feel manageable if the roads turned slick, and still returned 70 miles per gallon all the time.
In addition to the joys of having a rat bike, I also appreciate just having a small motorcycle in the rotation. That role was filled for me for several years by the 1996 Suzuki GN125 that was my mother’s motorcycle and I inherited when she stopped riding. It was much less capable than the NX250, but I still managed to put around 900 miles a year on it, according to my mileage logs, just using it for local transportation and errands. I also got the satisfaction of knowing that riding it was the best way to keep the tiny carburetor from clogging up and I was preserving a family heirloom that was a birthday gift from my father to my mother, both of them since departed. Then, when I moved from Ohio to Massachusetts and needed to downsize, I rode it from Ohio to Maine and gave it to my nephew, who had just gotten his motorcycle license.
The Continental TKC80 tires are more off-road-oriented than my riding portfolio requires, but where I live, some ability to handle mud is not a bad thing, especially this time of year.
Now, for the first time since that post-move downsizing, I have something small, something ratty, to ride on those days when I’m not going long distances, not out to goose my adrenal glands with lean angles, but just want to get where I need to go, enjoyably and easily. I’m looking forward to learning what it’s like to live with the BMW G 310 GS in that role. I have fairly high expectations. It’s more capable and comfortable at highway speeds than that old NX250, and while it’s not as light as some dual-sport or supermoto models I’ve considered buying recently, it’s still more than 100 pounds lighter than the next most svelte thing in my garage, the old Speed Triple. The Continental TKC80 knobbies currently on the BMW are far more dirt-oriented than my intended use case requires, but on the other hand the road I live on turns to dirt at the edge of town and makes for a nice shortcut heading south, and I’ll never worry about having enough tire for it.
The G 310 GS may just be the smallest motorcycle I can imagine at least semi-comfortably taking on a long trip. In other words, from the trails of Get On! Adventure Fest to a possible journey on pavement, the baby GS promises a broad performance portfolio.
Actually, all this is a little familiar to me. Over the years, I’ve occasionally looked at BMW boxer models and thought I should get one. Then I’d ride one and decide, yeah, that’s nice, but I really don’t feel the need to own it. The only BMW I’ve ever actually owned was another single-cylinder model, the original F650. Mine was a 1997 model and one winter, to escape the cold, I rode it deep into Mexico. It was an all-around capable motorcycle that somehow I just never bonded with (an experience that became a chapter in my book) and I later sold it.
Will my experience with this nearly as versatile BMW single be the same? We’ll see in the coming months. I’m looking forward to getting acquainted.
