Ninety Kilos I Did Not Invite

Ninety Kilos I Did Not Invite

I am afraid in the sand, my bike is ninety kilos too heavy, and I have not decided anything.

Last week I told you I got my licence at 55 and discovered I was not a special case, I was a demographic. This week it gets worse. My next bike is also a demographic.

A small declaration first. I have been near the new BMW F 450 GS. I did not ride it. I sat on it, and then I tilted it left, and then I tilted it right, the way you test a watermelon in the supermarket. A grown man of 57, in a showroom, rocking a motorcycle gently from side to side with a serious expression, while a salesman waits politely for him to finish. Nobody paid me anything. But you should know that my entire personal experience of this bike is that it wobbles nicely.

I Am Afraid Off-Road

Not nervous. Not "respectfully cautious". Afraid.

I have been off-road a few times now — training with instructors, desert days with the group, and that hill in the mountains where nobody got away clean. Every time, somewhere in the first twenty minutes, the same thought comes and sits with me: if this bike goes over, I cannot pick it up on my own.

My bike is a BMW R1250 GS Adventure. It weighs 268 kg with fuel in it. The seat is 890 mm high in the low setting. On tarmac this is all wonderful. It is heavy the way a good, solid thing is heavy. In sand, the same numbers become a completely different sentence.

So I made a rule and I follow it: I do not go off-road without a group. Not for the company — for the lifting.

I want to be fair to the rule, because it is a good one and I am not trying to escape it. Nobody should ride alone in the desert anyway. Heat, soft sand, no signal — the group is correct. What I would like is for the group to be my choice and not my requirement. At the moment my riding plan has a staffing requirement, like a small construction project.

The Numbers

The new BMW F 450 GS weighs 178 kg ready to ride. Mine weighs 268 kg.

Ninety kilos. That is one extra adult sitting on my motorcycle who never gets off, never pays for fuel, and never says thank you.

Now let me be honest about that number before somebody else is. My bike carries 30 litres of fuel. The small one carries 14. So about twelve of those ninety kilos are petrol that I chose to bring. My invisible passenger is, to a large extent, made of petrol. I could remove him by riding with a half-empty tank, which in the middle of the desert is its own special kind of stupid.

So call it seventy-eight kilos of real difference. Still most of a person.

Seat heights: mine is 890 mm. The 450 is 845 mm as standard, and BMW also sell a low seat at 830 mm. Forty-five or sixty millimetres does not sound like anything — until it is the difference between the front of your foot and your whole foot, at the exact moment the ground turns out to be softer than you thought. That is not a measurement. That is a small religious experience.

I did not need research to tell me my bike is heavy. I needed research to tell me I am not being pathetic.

The Evidence I Forgot I Had

Then I remembered something, and I felt slightly less pathetic without any research at all.

Last year in Canada I rented a bike for a few days — a BMW F 750 GS, 227 kg. Roughly forty kilos lighter than mine, which on paper is not dramatic.

It was dramatic.

Not on the highway, where my big bike is honestly better. It was at walking speed — car parks, tight turns, the slow awkward moments where you are basically balancing a heavy thing between your knees and hoping. On the F 750 those moments simply stopped being events. I was not managing the bike. I was just riding it.

So I already have a data point in the middle of my own argument and I had forgotten about it:

• 268 kg — my GSA. Needs a committee.
• 227 kg — the F 750 GS I rented. Noticeably, obviously easier.
• 178 kg — the 450. Fifty kilos below the one that already felt easy.

Forty kilos made that much difference. I am told ninety will make more. This is the least surprising conclusion in the history of arithmetic, and it still took me a year to notice it.

I Am Not Being Pathetic (Official Confirmation)

American dealers sold 7.6% fewer motorcycles and scooters in 2025 than in 2024. Touring bikes fell 13%. Cruisers fell 6%. The big, heavy, expensive machines are going backwards.

And then this line, from the same Motorcycle Industry Council numbers:

Adventure bikes under 600cc: up 10%.

That is not a general trend I am borrowing to make myself feel better. That is the exact shelf I have been standing in front of, breathing on the glass.

The MIC's own explanation names me almost by accident. Smaller bikes, they say, are more affordable, easier to insure, and more approachable for new or returning riders — and they also suit experienced riders who want something lighter and more versatile.

Returning rider. That was last week's entire post. So I did not stop being a demographic. I was simply moved to a different shelf.

BMW Had Already Written My Argument

Here is the part that made me laugh at my own screen.

I had been building this case privately for months. The fear, the weight, the group rule, the arithmetic. It felt like a confession — the kind of thing you admit quietly to one friend who also has a bad back and no longer sits on the floor voluntarily.

Then I read BMW's press release for the F 450 GS. Second paragraph:

"The current trend toward downsizing, i.e., switching from heavy motorcycles to compact and versatile machines, demonstrates the great interest in this segment."

Downsizing. Munich printed my private confession as a market trend, in a press release, before I had the courage to publish it. I was not being brave and honest. I was being predictable, in German, on schedule.

I want to be fair to BMW, because it would be easy and wrong to say they built this for young beginners and helped me by accident. They did not say that. Their own words are that the bike is for "anyone who values maximum agility, versatility, pure riding pleasure" — daily riding, touring, or just something light and uncomplicated. That is a deliberately wide door. I am standing in it, holding my back.

The company that sold me 268 kg now also sells a GS that weighs 178. That is not a niche product. That is a hint.

Adam Child rode it for Australian Motorcycle News at the launch and rated it very highly off-road — possibly the best in its class, he said. One line of his stayed with me:

"Even after some prolonged periods off-road, when fatigue can set in, I felt in charge and up for more."

He is a professional. He is younger than me. He gives the bike back at the end of the day and somebody else washes it. And even he mentions fatigue. If a fit professional brings it up politely, imagine what it is doing to a 57-year-old at noon in June, on his third pick-up of the morning.

That is the real question. Not whether I can lift a bike once, fresh, at eight in the morning, with my dignity intact. Whether I can lift it the third time.

The Hole in My Own Argument

Now let me point out the weakness myself, before one of you does it in the comments with more enthusiasm.

I know I cannot lift 268 kg alone. I have never tried to lift 178.

My entire case rests on the small bike being liftable by me, and I do not actually have that evidence. I have tilted one in a showroom. That is not a scientific study.

Off-road schools teach a proper technique for this — back to the seat, legs, small steps, leverage instead of heroics. I have never properly learned it. So it is entirely possible that the correct answer to my problem is one weekend of training and not thirty thousand dirhams of motorcycle.

That is the least exciting possible answer, which in my experience is usually a sign that it is the correct one.

The Two on My List

BMW F 450 GS. 178 kg, 845 mm seat or 830 mm low, 420cc, 48 hp. A BMW sales manager here told me it is over AED 40,000, and it is currently on backorder. So I can pay more and wait longer. On the other hand it is the same family as my bike, so I would already know where all the buttons are.

CFMoto 450MT. 185 kg, 820 mm seat, 449cc, 42 hp. The official UAE site lists it at AED 29,400, reduced from AED 32,000. That is roughly ten thousand dirhams less than the BMW, and available now.

Two honest notes. First, the CFMoto's seat is only 10 mm lower than the BMW's low seat — not the advantage I assumed before I actually checked BMW's options list, which is a reminder that I keep deciding things before reading. Second, the real CFMoto question is not the badge, it is the service network, parts and resale value in this country. I know what the BMW network gives me. I do not yet know what the other one gives me. That is a question, not an insult.

Both are lighter than my bike by roughly the weight of a person.

The Part I Have Not Solved

In my company, retirement is at 60. I am 57. They may extend by a year. They may not. Nobody has written this down anywhere I am allowed to read.

The case against buying, with real numbers: AED 29,400 for the cheaper one, or over 40,000 for the German one — plus a second registration, a second insurance, a second service schedule, and a second battery to keep alive through the summer while I am inside enjoying the air conditioning. Over three years that is not a small number. And it is money that is supposed to be the safety net for the part of life where nobody pays me every month. I have one driveway and one bank account, and neither of them is getting bigger.

The case for buying: after 60, what exactly am I going to do? A man with time and no plan is a sad thing. A man with time and two motorcycles has a workshop, a hobby, and a reason to put on trousers in the morning.

That is the version I prefer. I do not know if it is the true one. If you want the longer version of this particular argument with myself, I have written about being middle-aged in the Middle East before.

My wife will have a view. She will listen to all of this very patiently, and then she will ask me one simple question I have not thought about, and that will be the end of the discussion. It usually is.

So Tell Me — This Is What the Comment Box Is For

There is now a comment box under every post on this site. This is the first time I have had a real use for it.

Two questions, and I want the second one more than the first.

One: if you were three years from retiring, riding a bike you love but cannot lift alone, would you buy the small one now — or keep the money, ride the bike you already have, and accept that some days you ride with people who can help?

Two, and this is the one I really want: has anybody here actually downsized? Did you regret it? Did the big bike sit in the garage looking betrayed, or did you sell it and never think about it again?

Whichever way you argue, I am printing it. If you talk me out of it, I am printing that too and showing her. She will enjoy it either way.

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