The bike looks better with the seat cowl on anyway. Sporting weekend rides are where it's at, which is the main reason I bought the machine. Just pick a gear, point and torque your way through. Again, the engine is a major piece of work. Handling is excellent, it'll lean over way farther than most will push it, and grip of the road is very good.
Some people bitch and moan about it being heavy.
The bike does have a couple low to mid rpm throttle glitches that bug me but are fairly minor. My bike is the exception here, I've tuned and serviced many of these TL1000R's now and they all ran very nice. I'll sort mine out in time. It's a nice compromise between race bike and sport-tourer. Next years TLR will not come in the all-yellow paint option, kind of a bummer.