fredz43
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I have been a member of a BMW club, the Springfield (IL) Milers BMW MC, for over 20 years, in spite of owning only one BMW for a few months in that time. I guess they are not your typical BMW club, as they really don't care what you ride, although a friendly jab in any direction about someone's choice of bike is considered good sport. Probably 50-60% are on BMW's but the rest of us are on a variety of makes. It is more about the mutual enjoyment of sport touring riding and generally having a good time and not getting too serious about anything.
Springfield hasn't had a BMW dealer for some years and these guys have to ride about 2 hours to St Louis or farther to another dealer in Iowa. St Louis had three different BMW shops in the last 10 years or less and I haven't had much of an opportunity to interact with the latest. The original one, though was a friendly place and I used to enjoy riding my Japanese bike down with one of my BMW buddies when he had to get service (often). We would ask the sales guy if we could take a couple of demos out for a ride and we would always be welcome to take a couple of them out for a few hours ride while they worked on my friend's bike. Great fun, but I never rode a BMW that I fell in love with on those rides. My ST's both 1100 and 1300 always felt better when I rode them back home after those demos.
Springfield hasn't had a BMW dealer for some years and these guys have to ride about 2 hours to St Louis or farther to another dealer in Iowa. St Louis had three different BMW shops in the last 10 years or less and I haven't had much of an opportunity to interact with the latest. The original one, though was a friendly place and I used to enjoy riding my Japanese bike down with one of my BMW buddies when he had to get service (often). We would ask the sales guy if we could take a couple of demos out for a ride and we would always be welcome to take a couple of them out for a few hours ride while they worked on my friend's bike. Great fun, but I never rode a BMW that I fell in love with on those rides. My ST's both 1100 and 1300 always felt better when I rode them back home after those demos.