4thTimeLucky

I'm moving to London at the end of the summer and want to get my first bike.

What should I go for?

[Main considerations: money, safety, style.]

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BooRadley

Beginner Bikes

Start there.

kipperoo3

BeginnerBikes is a great site, since you'll be in london there'll be quite a few Yamaha Diversion 600's (so I've heard). The american version was the SECA II, which I own, and consider a great beginner to intermediate bike. I also think it looks kinda cool.
[IMG]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0SgAAACkWKD*izstHtkWgcRjsC01gX2Vnvheq7CPEmLDYyrRcRYaTV6mibv4MOtUhz!nzE3BYea1OSfphLZM2EoN0mPAHFfgW7YIa1v7QlrhjymPw!g!CRQ/SECA2Rsmall.jpg?dc=4675418641666241499[/IMG]

The diversion has a some different body graphics and a slightly different exhaust system. There are a lot of diversion clubs in the UK and probably quite a few available to buy there. That's my two cents.

Oh yeah, they're also pretty cheap!

bundy

thanks for the link.
should prove helpful for me as well.

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oane

I can only suggest that you visit nice forums like

Sportsbikeworld aka http://www.sportbikeworld.com
Cycleforums http://www.cycleforums.com
etc.[These two are the best, btw]

Read, read everything they have to say about newbey bikes.
Biking is very differnet than cars, more so on London roads where:

a) Roads are frequently wet an slippery.
b) There are a few thousand jokers who are riding like idiots just so that they can save some money because of new schemes. They ride so pathetically they are a hazard to everyone in vicinity.

Whatever you buy, ride safely and ride with the thought that everyone else on the road is out to kill you. You'll survive. hopefully.

EDited for links. And yeah, don't let peer pressure dictate your choice of two-wheelers. You don't necessarily have to buy a bike as well. There are plenty of moto-scooters from Yamaha. Honda, Suzuki. Very fast, enjoyable and very practical for city riding too. Sportbikes can be annoying in city traffic. Just keep an open mind. Don't rush things and become another r6 squid if you get my drift.

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4thTimeLucky

Thanks for those links guys.

On a related topic: What was your first bike?

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laughter

The link I had was already posted. Beginnerbikes is an excellent site though.

I'm picking up my first bike within a couple weeks. 1986 Honda Nighthawk 750. 13k km. Black.

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Shadow

Thanks for that link. Good stuff there!

BooRadley

Go to beginner bikes before the sport bike sites. Beginner bikes emphasises safety, and most sport bike sites are like "Yeah, get any bike you want as long as you like it. You can always use less throttle"

dev0lved

My first bike was a Kwasaki ZXR250C '92 Model Import

Nice, stable, and fun ... looks good too

4thTimeLucky

dev0lved-

I am thinking of getting a Ninja 250, but can't seem to find many in the UK. What is the upkeep like on it?

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BooRadley

The ninja 250 ( EX 250 ) is held in high regard among many. It still is a strong accelerator ( 0-60 mph in about 5.75 secs ) and holds a "fun" value to people . Remember, the smallest and "slowest" bikes are still ALOT faster than most cars.

Ghost Bladder

<P>Ah the CB250. Not the coolest, but you do want to live to own a Fireblade, yes? If this is your first bike, avoid models with fairing - full-faired models can attract double the insurance premium and there is a very good chance you will drop it (EXPENSIVE). Also seriously consider a scoot - Vespas are the shiznit in Europe.

Ghost Bladder

<P>My first bike: 1986 Yamaha SRX 250 exactly as in the photo. Single cylinder DOHC good for 100mph. I loved that old wreck.

GSRIDER

Are you going to have this bike in Europe?

My first bike was/is a 1977 GS Suzuki 550.

I got it with the intent of it being a "learning bike", if I dumped it it would not be a big deal.... but I love that bike... and have never dumped it. It's perfect for what I use it for... maily city driving alot of stop and go.

However I do want to get a bigger bike and start doing some longer trips on it... but that won't be till the kids get a wee bit older

Oh and in Europe avoid big clunky bikes... no good for thier congested city driving. And I wouldn't get anything with too much power... Get a duo sport something that will be easy to handle and handle a bunch of road conditions

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thadon

good post ... I am looking at bikes myself and might buy one soon.... I am looking at the Triumph 600tt. Does anyone know something about this bike or has anyone owned or ridden this bike?

4thTimeLucky

Thanks to those who suggested beginner websites. I've been lurking on a few and the general gist seems to be get a 250, or if you are big or brave a 500.

Good 250s seem pretty hard to come by in England for some reason (e.g. no Ninja 250)

Current favourite is the Suzuki GS500. It's the one that English test centres use and is quite common over here. This means it should be cheaper second hand, doesn't matter so much if I drop it and may make my parents sleep a little easier at night.

One thing I can't seem to judge is what level of personal risk you need to accept to ride. I've been driving for four years without incident and judge the chance of me ever getting hurt in a car as very small indeed. However on bikes accidents seem more common, less in your control (their due to the stupidity of car drivers mostly) and when they occur your chance of injury is far far higher. So how risky is it?

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Ghost Bladder

Always wear a protective jacket, full face helmet, gloves and strong footwear. If it weren't for my decision to pop on my Alpinestars one night I'm positive I would have seen ankle bone and acquired a limp.





There are many horror stories and this is one of them (NSFA)

On average 2000+ Italians die in scooter accidents every year because they don't wear helmets and believe they are Valentino Rossi.

BooRadley

Ghost Bladder, is that a real pic? How could anyone survive if that happened to em? You think shock alone would kill them, and they wouldn't be able to sit up and look at the camera...

Ghost Bladder

It's real. If you search rotten.com they have the story - guy falls off his hog, slows down with his teeth

Live to ride.

BooRadley

About motorcycle safety,

I enjoy talking about bikes alot but don't have the cash for one, therefore, do not own one. I am not qualified to tell you how safe/unsafe they are to ride based on skill. I seriously want one, but I don't believe they are in anyway "safe" as compared to a car. On a related note, I don't feel too particularly safe in a car either, not because of my own abilities, but because of others.

Why do I feel unsafe in cars? I could drive technically perfect and some idiot could still wreck into me and severely injure me in a car. There is alot of people who walk away from nasty car wrecks, but when it comes to motorcycles, statistically more people get severely injured when getting hit by a car than when two cars collide. Simple physics. The best driver in the world could be t-boned going through a green light, and the best motorcyclist in the world could also. Skill makes no difference when it is someone elses terrible error.

Getting pitched off because of a lack of skill is one thing and I can probably ( I don't know yet because I don't ride ) accept that risk , but getting severely hurt/killed by someone elses complete lack of attention/skill is something that I don't know if I can accept.

When it comes time for me to buy a bike, I will have to heavily weigh in on the risks and whether street riding is for me, or stick to offroad only riding instead. The risk of injury is still there, but it is whether you would like to put the risk in your hands or someone elses.

Bikes are not as safe as cars, period, simply because of their inherant instability . They have less than half the rolling resistance of cars and a quarter of the mass. Once again, simple physics.

I am not saying this as a biased idiot who completely disrespects bikes, I am saying this as a reasonable person, and hope the motorcyclists on this board will agree with me.

I would encourage anyone else to make similar considerations if they do go through with getting/riding a bike and to read beginnerbikes and other newbie forums, as it only seems reasonable because these machines are NOT to be taken lightly.

I can't tell you how safe they are. I don't know the exact answer. I hope I have given you some thoughts to lead you in the right direction.
I/the MSF/other board members/your friends are not responsible for what you do related to motorcycles, YOU are.

GSRIDER

BooRadley You make some valid points

I think riding ranks right up there with orgies... but I get to ride more.

OK and now an inspirational story. Pay special attention to the last paragraph... it makes me want to cry... and fix my bike.

Really it's good. It makes ya want to ride!!!!!!!!!



Season of the Bike
by Dave Karlotski



There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind's big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don't even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that's just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it's hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you're changed forever. The letters "MC" are stamped on your driver's license right next to your sex and height as if "motorcycle" was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.

But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I'm alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.

Sometimes I even hear music. It's like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind's roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock 'n roll, dark orchestras, women's voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.

At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it's as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.

A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smilesflap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It's a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It's light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it's a conduit of grace, it's a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.

I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I've had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn't trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I've done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we're safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, "Sleep, sleep." Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that's no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

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4thTimeLucky

Ghost Bladder That was quite possibly the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, and I've been using this interweb thingy for a while now.

Hopefully by the time I get my bike I'll have forgotten I ever saw that image.

I am safety conscious (I tend to think those who don't protect themselves don't think they have a life worth protecting) and had planned to 'dress for the crash not for the ride'. Nonetheless, with the image of that poor guy in my head I'd be so scared every time I got on a bike I'd be bound to crash.

Can't even bare to read the guys story. And what were you thinking putting grinning smileys in the same thread? Ew.

Does anyone have any info on the percentage of all bike riders to have accidents of varying seriousness? Horror stories (and pictures) are one thing, but it would be nice to have something a little more solid to go by.

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GSRIDER

I'm sorry but you can't base what you do in life according to fatality statistics. People die while having having sex and that sure as hell has not interupted my sexlife. Joggers have heart attacks, pedstrians fall into manholes, bears eat campers, microwaves make you impodent, cell phones give you brian tumors..... study after study, stat after stat.... but no matter what you are going to die someday.

NOTHING IS SAFE!!!!

Think about just riding a bicycle, you have just as much of a chance at getting whapped by a car on that as you do on a motorcycle. The fact is that people in cars do not pay attention anymore... and you really see that when you're on a bike. No need to be both a defensive and offensive driver while on a bike, you watch them cause they are not watching you!!!!!

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4thTimeLucky

I don't want to sound like someone who lives by the numbers, but I think your list proves why stats and studies are important.

S&Ss tell me that using my microwave and cell phone are safe and the risks tiny. They tell me that even though plane crashes are always on the news, I'm safer in a plane than in a car... that violent crime is actually falling... and that bears very rarely eat campers. They tell me that I would be dumb to take ecstacy without drinking water and that I can expect to lose a few years off my life if I smoke. Fatality (and related) statistics are (even if they don't realise it) behind most people's... decision to use protection when sleeping with strangers... their opinion on the war in Iraq... their choice of insurance... even their choice of holiday destination (would your company let you go to Hong Kong right now?).

Given all this it doesn't seem to be unreasonable to want to know what the stats are for motorbiking. If fatalaties are the same as for bicycles and cars then great. I have experience of those and can accept the risk. If however 1 in 10 people who ride a bike for more than three years are involved in an accident that requires hospital treatment, then that's the sort of thing I'd like to know about before starting out.

I don't want to come across as a kill joy. I love living life as much as the next person and take risks in doing so. But bikers wear helmets for a reason and I'd just like to have a better understanding of what that reason is (beyond a picture of a man with no face!).

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GSRIDER

I hear what you're saying.

That damn no face picture man. Quite frankly I wish I never saw that pic.

Let me tell you this. I have one friend who died, one who lost a ton of brain motor skills and one who broke his leg so bad he ended up getting addicted to pain pills. I know riders who have lost control and riders "picked off" by cars.... seemingly on purpose.

I personally avoid interstates or main highways, congested and or rush hour driving. I don't ride late at night after the bars close. Hell I don't remember the last time I rode after the sun went down.

Yeah you can get killed or laid up. But I still love to ride and in spells like now (bike was hit while parked, and the car owner just drove away leaving my now unrideable bike behind) everytime I hear a bike go by on a sunny day I get pissed that I'm not out there with them.

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4thTimeLucky

Thanks for that GSRIDER.

Thought provoking post. Sorry that you lost a friend as well.

There does seem to be a jump in risk from cars to bikes. 17 to 21 are the most dangerous years for drivers and I have left them without hearing of any accidents that my friends, fellow students or in fact anyone I know have been in. Yet from your group of friends you can give three examples of serious or fatal accidents. Of course there are differences - in support of the higher risk argument is the fact that fewer people ride than drive, making your 3 tales even more significant, but against it is the fact that you are older than me and so have more life experience and riding years behind you - but still its a sobering thought.

I think that I will end up deciding that it is a 'significant' risk, but one worth taking. I hope that my parents can see it the same way, or else they are likely to lose sleep over something happening to their only son.

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GSRIDER

I will say that the death occured many many years ago; a teen, fresh out of high school just doing more than he could handle.

The brain, was a DUI.

But the pain pills was completely the car drivers fault, ran a red light and t-boned the bike.

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BooRadley

Hey guys, I got some more cool links
http://www.popularmechanics.com/auto...ry/index.phtml Popular mechanics explains safety gear, I'd say a must read

http://www.guggenheimlasvegas.org/lv_home.html
The art of the motorcycle ( a still cool link)

Ghost Bladder

NSFA - Not Safe For Anyone

mwahahahah

GSRIDER: I know what you mean I have seen hot cars try to bump riders in particular a souped up RX4 chasing the back tire of a Fireblade, turning right on an intersection. That was about 5 years ago and it will be eons before I lose that image.

rockogre

My sister just bought a Buell 500 so she could learn to ride. She says it won't start if the kickstand is down or it's not in nuetral. Both good habits to learn. She also says it is dirt easy to operate and is a blast to drive.

I've been riding since 1972 and learned on a 750. Not a good plan. Start on something that isn't looking to kill you the first time you make a mistake, and you will, it's part of the learning process.

Also condider what all breaks if you drop it or slide it and what that will cost out of pocket.

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dev0lved

My ZXR 250 C Ninja (Not to be confused with the ZZR 250 Ninja) was easy as piss to take care of.

I miss it a bit ... i liked being able to pull throttle all the way back constantly ... you don't need any restraint :P

-Ever-

Ahhh, London. I'm leaving in September to spend a semester abroad there. I'm soo excited!
Best of lucking finding a nice safe bike.

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