This story was originally published in City Bike Magazine.
We like to say that motorcycle restorations are like archaeological finds. History is revealed beneath every layer of dirt and dust—a thousand stories told in the arcane language of slapping pistons, worn valve guides, and multicolored wiring bodges.
That’s not just a cute analogy for this 1965 BMW R69S: it was actually buried—on purpose, along with two other bikes, in advance of a fast-burning wildfire in the Big Sur mountains. It also won the “Spirit of the Quail Award” at the Quail Motorcycle Gathering in the Carmel Valley May 16.
The owner lived up a steep, largely inaccessible canyon near Esalen. When the Big Basin fires hit in the summer of 2008, burning almost 250,000 acres, there just wasn’t time to transport the bikes out. So the owner took his handy loader, dug a hole, and buried them—for a month.
In a sobering way, it’s the motorcycling equivalent of the famed Mann Gulch fire of 1949 in Montana, when a firefighter saved himself by lighting a small patch of earth and letting a devastating fire pass over him. That act required the same kind of spontaneous decision. If the fire is advancing too fast, maybe you need to hold your ground and dig in. For that survivor, and these bikes, it was the only hope.
A Day in the Sun
Collector Robert Talbott, owner and founder of Talbott Vineyards, met the eccentric owner in 2011, and arranged to buy the bikes. For Talbott, the R69S was the motorcycling equivalent of King Tut’s tomb—without the gold amulets and scarabs. “I’ve been restoring ‘barn finds’ for 20 years,” he says. “I love bikes with great stories.”
Talbott enlisted Ben Vickery of Ben’s Motorcycle Works in Watsonville to help retrieve all three bikes—no easy task. It required a very narrow truck, and a bobcat.
“It was so gnarly,” said Vickery. “One side of the truck was scraping the side of the mountain, and the other was falling off a cliff.”
One of the bikes—a ’71 /5 with toaster tank—is now being converted to a scrambler by Vickery. Another—a ratty BMW chopper—was sold. But the real target of the expedition was the R69S. Talbott told Vickery to make the bike a reliable runner.
“But I gave explicit instructions,” says Talbott. “Don’t power-wash, clean, bead-blast, repaint, or polish the bike. Just leave it as is.
“After all, it’s the only bike in the world with that story.”
After two years of extensive work, the bike emerged like a miner rescued from underground: it squinted its eyes, looked straight into the sun, and thanked god for the small things in life–like being able to stand on its own two feet and chuff its way regally down the highway with Teutonic precision. Well, mostly. On two occasions, the bike rudely burped up spark plugs that had been previously stripped in the heads. But other than that, it’s been a good runner.
“It’s incredibly easy to ride,” says Talbott. “It’s big, and heavy, but the solo seat is wonderful. Plus, in 1965, it was a real hot rod for BMW.”
Looking at the BMW motorcycle today, you can see that the air cleaner has a fine patina of rust. A few other parts look like they were worked over by a drunken blacksmith with a ball-peen hammer. But the Earl’s fork resembled the Golden Gate Bridge when it was first built, and it still does. The fenders still could do service on a Kenworth truck, and the headlight looks big enough to illuminate a prison yard. Even the taillights cast the dim flicker that they always had—no better and no worse. Only the number “6” is missing from the insignia on the rear fender, which Talbott thinks is a fitting omission for such a storied bike.
Anyone looking at the Beemer today might just be tempted to say, “Damn, that thing looks like it’s been through a fire!”
In this case, it actually has.