I meant to write this post while on my family vacation off the coast of Maine for the last 10 days. It was great to gather with family and let little cousins hang out with little cousins, fish off the dock, kayak around neighboring islands, but alas, it was a moto-less trip. On occasional forays into town from the island including two trips back and forth to the Portland airport, I saw lots of Harleys and cruiser-type bikes on the roads back there, but very few dualsport bikes save for an occasional big GS set up for road touring. It made me appreciate the terrain and open spaces we have in the west, particularly between Utah and the Pacific Coast. Great for the small to midsize dualsport bikes favored by our posse. But it also made me wonder what’s between here and the Eastern Coast.

Now I snap out of my digression, as this post was supposed to be about some recent farkles added to the new F800 GS. What’s a farkle? I’m not sure, it’s a word passed on by Hood River F800 GS-er Tom Lehman, but I’ll take a stab at my own definition: all the little expensive shit for your motorcycle that you spend hours researching on the internet, that you spend hours in your garage installing, but which is all necessary to make your bike uniquely your bike. And I’m not talking about buying every little piece of overpriced gear out of the BMW accessory catalog before you roll your bike away from whence it came. A lot of blokes do that, but it’s sort of generic. I’m talking about stuff you wish you had on that last weekend ride that would have served a purpose, even if the only purpose was to make the bike look more badass in your photos. Them is farkles. The first farkle to write about is a nifty little kickstand footprint sold by Touratech. I will refrain from commenting on the overpricedness of most Touratech stuff because if you are reading this you know. Thing is, they make good shit, they test it, and you have two choices in the case of many farkles for your F800 GS: either buy it from Touratech or go without it.

This kickstand footprint is a necessary farkle and if you choose to go without, you will know why you need it the first time you get off your bike in a grassy meadow and the bike falls over in Slo-Mo while the kickstand settles into the loamy earth. Installation is pretty easy, but I wish they would use hardware with slightly larger fasteners so it’s not like a finger puzzle to put together, and the bolts would not be as prone to stripping out. The allen key heads on the bottom are tiny, like 3mm. Who carries a 3mm on the road anyway? Silly.

Touratech Sidestand Extension, BMW F800 GS

I was going some serious searchin’ using the Google, and I came across a cool blog dedicated to the Niner way of life. Niners, 29ers, what’s it all about? All I can say is, I don’t know why it’s different, but it is. 29″ wheels aren’t really that much bigger than 26″ wheels, but then again, they are. It’s like on Spinal Tap When Nigel is talking about his amp going up to 11, “this one goes to eleven.” It’s just a little bit more of everything when you are riding a Niner. Anyway, check these folks out at Twenty Nine Inches.

by Jasonwg