The boyfriend won’t believe my protestations of “I don’t want a motorcycle” when I keep, uh, looking at motorcycles, but he thinks I should get a bike like he used to have, a Kawasaki Eliminator. (I am, in fact, quite small and weak.) The advice I’ve been seeing is more to the Honda Shadow area. He says that’s “too much bike” for me. (I already ride a little 49cc scooter.) I am somewhat afraid of being unable to pick the bike up, it’s true. Is he right? It seems to me that the little Kawasaki would be essentially just like my scooter, instead of a “real” motorcycle. On the other hand, he loved that bike and he grew up riding his dad’s giant Harley.
My hands-on experience is minimal right now, so I couldn’t tell you. It seems like it shouldn’t be a huge effort, though. I would imagine if you explained your predicament to a dealer or someone who owns one, they’d help you figure it out. At least as far as being able to pick up the bike, anyway. From what I can tell, though, 125s are the very very low end of the scale, and if your scooter doesn’t have enough power to suit you it sounds like the next step up.
I mean, can you imagine how embarassing it would be to be standing by the side of the road trying to flag down burly guys on Harleys because my bike fell down and I can’t budge it?
You could say the same things about another thumper (single-cylinder engine), the Suzuki Savage (now re-named the Boulevard S40).
It has a 650cc engine, a very user-friendly power curve (power at low RPM), and can hit 85+ mph.
ETA: But if you are 6’ or taller, the Savage will be too small for you, as will the 250s mentioned above such as the Rebel and the Nighthawk. By too small, I don’t mean engine size … I mean your body will be too big for the frames of these bikes.
All true, but beware that this is still a sports bike, alebit a beginner’s sport bike.
As such, however, your insurance rates will be very high, as sports bike riders tend on a whole to be in many, many more accidents than riders of other kinds of bikes.
I’m going to have to give that a whirl with my scooter. (This from somebody who has a bitch of a time putting that damned thing up on the center stand. That isn’t strength so much as timing or ergonomics or something that I get some days and not others, though. I once got a stellar bruise doing it.)
Good point. I went looking for statistics of accidents by type of motorcycle and could only find a study from New South Wales in the time I had. (Fourth link down on this search, in case you want to view it as HTML instead of PDF.) Apparently sports bikes made up 39% of all accidents, and sports plus traditional plus trail made up 80%. Cruisers and touring cycles only made up 20%. I’d say that’s probably because they’re ridden by more experienced riders, but even so the study is only limited to riders age 17-25.
Most likely it’s just because the sort of person who likes to ride a sports bike isn’t going to be very safety-conscious, but that won’t change the insurance rate. Food for thought, anyway.
You beat me to the Skert site. Be advised that this technique works only on surfaces with good traction for both the tires and your boots…if you spill on mud, gravel, sand,etc. other techniques are required.
How do you do it then? It seems like spilling on gravel is probably more likely than not. I guess in that situation I pick the gravel out of my hide and wait for the big guy with the hard beer belly on the Harley to ride by?
Sure enough, I had a bit of time and checked out insurance quotes on Progressive for a Suzuki GS500F (sports) versus a Suzuki Boulevard S40 (cruiser). The GS500F was a whopping $600 for 12 months, while the S40 was $366 for the same level of insurance. If I understand things right, they both deliver about the same level of power, which means you could get into equal amounts of trouble, but one’s statistically more likely to be in an accident.
I’m not a huge fan of cruisers, but since I intend to keep two vehicles, keeping the insurance low may not be a bad idea. I bet I could learn to like 'em anyway.
No way dude, sportsbikes offer a lot more power per cc than a cruiser, almost by definition. The Boulevard S40 has about 30 horsepower, while the GS500F has closer to 50.
Sportsbikes are also a bit harder to learn on because of the crouched forward riding position and the fact that they’re designed to go fast, so they’re harder to maneuver at low speeds. Which is probably when you’re going to lay it down.
Gotcha. Looks like I’m aiming for a cruiser if I can’t find a maxi-scooter (and I probably can’t). The S40 sounds like the best bet at this point, although I’m still looking around.
I took my second stab at finding a helmet today. Last time I tried, it didn’t pan out so hot; it was my first time in the store and I felt self-conscious as hell. I feel like a chump admitting it, but I didn’t actually realize there were different sizes and I was trying on mediums and smalls and wondering if my head really was that fat. :o Today I took a little more time to look and found a comfortable flip-front helmet that should do me pretty well. Those things are pretty neat, and much easier to handle than full-face helmets.
ETA: I just realized I’ve sort of taken over Survey1215’s thread. I figured it was easier to keep newbie motorcyclist stuff in one thread. My bad, man.