The story about the bike

Sorry about the ambiguity of my previous post with the image of the motorcycle. I really wanted to throw a pic of the bike up there to show a few people, but kept not making time to write something to go along with it. Some of that time I was busy out getting some "seat-time" on the bike.

So yeh, I bought a motorcycle. Like many other young male americans, I have drooled over motorcycles for years. I've been envious of various friends that have had them and have even had the opportunity to ride a few. I've always thought having a bike would be fun, but money was always an issue as well as some other factors.

But ever since Mike got his bike, I've been thinking more and more about getting one. Taking the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's safety course a couple weekends ago didn't help, either.

So for the past few weeks Mike's been trying to sell me on buying his '04 Honda CBR F4i. It's an absolutely beutiful bike. And I've riden it and it's incredible. So, as I began thinking harder about ACTUALLY buying it, I began looking around online to find out what people thought about the bike and about a fairly inexperienced rider riding that bike. I came across a "newbie rider" forum on Sportbikes.net. This forum had lots of good suggestions for new riders, but the most predominant being the suggestion that inexperienced riders should NOT start out on a 600cc motorcycle. Their argument was that the 600cc bikes these days are incredibly fast, sensitive, and unforgiving to rider error. Instead they recommended that these newbies buy a lower-powered bike, like a Kawasaki Ninja 250 or 500. Amazingly, the community over on SportBikes.net is incredibly unified in their voice on this matter. It was at this point that I began to wonder if it was probably a better (and safer) thing to begin looking for a better bike for my skill level. So I did.

On Saturday Mike and I went down to Burcham Cycles in Colonial Heights to check out a used 2005 Ninja 500 they had for sale. As we walked up to the store, the bike was sitting right out front. It was black and grey and beautiful. I had checked out a couple of other Ninja 500s in previous days, but they had all been grey or navy blue. The black immediately appealed to me more than any other bike I had looked at.

A closer inspection revealed that this bike was basically brand new. It turns out that the previous owner had purchased the bike, put 138 miles on it, and then sold it because of some health problems with his legs.

After about 2 hours of pacing the showroom floor trying to talk the salesman down on his price, and trying to squeeze the very best deal out of buying the motorcycle, I finally signed on the dotted line for the bike.

By the time I walked out of there I had purchased a motorcycle, a helmet, a mesh jacket, a waterproof cover, and gloves. I was in shock.

Mike rode the bike back to his house so I could get accustomed to it riding around his neighborhood before taking it out on the streets.

After putzing around the residential streets for a while, we finally ventured out onto the back roads around their neighborhood. It was a little intimidating at first riding with traffic, but it definitely got better the longer we rode.

All in all, I'm very pleased with my purchase. I think many guys would probably have trouble putting their pride aside and buying the "lesser" of the two motorcycles, but I really feel like it was the best choice. The Ninja 500 still has PLENTY enough get-up-and-go to make it a blast to ride, but it's forgiving enough to allow some mistakes without dumping me.

Posted by Jeff at June 14, 2005 09:37 AM