Meet my new bike: it's exactly the same as the old one

"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit)
04/11/2016 at 13:38 • Filed to: two wheels good, bikes, motorcycles, bike guides

So I’ve been making a few posts here and there asking for which bike my dad should trade his old tourer in for. Since we were anticipating doing a trade with a dealership that didn’t suck and have that bike taken down to a dealership that didn’t suck for work, that severely limited my options to whatever was available on the showroom floor new or used with the dealership we ultimately wanted to work with. Well as it turned out the deal fell through namely because 1.) to some extent all dealerships suck and 2.) the tourer he wanted to unload was worth practically nothing upon tradein (I can basically get myself a used Grom or small-displacement scooter and that was it). So we decided the hell with it, put the damn tourer on consignment with a local bike shop that specializes in that kind of thing and since I have a number of promising job prospects finally lining up I can use my own damn money to buy whatever damn bike I actually want (and especially since said job prospects look to be increasingly out-of-state or even out-of-country - I finally found a potential sponsor for overseas work! - it just ends up being a practical issue and now we don’t have to worry about unloading yet another bike again if I end up vacating anyway).

In the meantime...the original plan was to not only unload the tourer but the small little 250cc Suzuki cruiser we bought as a training bike as well. We were keeping the Suzuki in “reserve” in case we needed to trade it in too for the bike upgrade but since it still wasn’t enough to make up any difference in trade value we decided to keep it and, what the hell, make that my bike for the time being. It doesn’t have the power of the 950 I ride (or rather my dad will be riding) now, and it’s especially lacking in highway power, but hell, it’s overall a more fun bike, especially for the type of urban and suburban riding I actually like. Since my dad is getting bored and picked up another job to have his time occupied, he’s not going to have a lot of time to ride anyway (I guess the implication of picking up a job just to occupy his time with is that even he’s getting bored with the riding style he’s grown used to, though he doesn’t want to change and adapt to a new riding style because he thinks doing so will cause his knees to hurt - whatever. Old people, amirite?) so instead of having to find a bike that can keep up with his type of riding style I can just use the little 250 for whatever the hell I want (aside from modifying it into a tracker or a cafe racer, we still want to keep it stock for eventual easy resale. Besides, IMHO modifying a cruiser-style bike into a cafe racer is dumb when there’s so many better suited frames out there to be had for cheap).

This is the 250 I’m talking about, the old/new bike, photo credit by me, ME. Also did you know you can’t do italics or bold in these caption thingies?

Speaking of cafe bikes, given that I’ve got more than a few thousand miles under my belt and this style of bike has always been attractive to me, I’m thinking that maybe I could pick one up. My dad has agreed that we can use at least some of the proceeds from the consignment of the tourer into whatever bike I want, in the form of either a repayable or permanent loan, as long as the bike is around 2-2500 (or less, naturally). Or again, since I have some promising job prospects finally lining up I can just pay for it myself entirely. So, I’m open to any or all suggestions again if you can keep it in that price range or at least in “affordable” territory. I’m open to anything you can say about cafe racers ( !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , but I figure by this time I should have enough riding skill to overcome or work around them - remember, this isn’t a first bike purchase, it’s more like a third or even fourth bike purchase at this point), and I’m looking into CB300Fs, CB500Fs and SV650s for a good all-rounder or urban/suburban commuter/cruiser. I’ll probably need some guides or advice in terms of working on bikes too (which is something I’ve been meaning to get into anyway). Especially if I’m going to get a CB or SV, I’d like something that’s in poor enough cosmetic condition that I don’t have to be too upset about dropping it (or adding a crazy-ton of miles on it) but good enough mechanical condition so that I can at least know what I’m doing (or barring that, be taught to know what I’m doing).

Oh, and many thanks to Peter Black for reminding me that the CB500F exists, that was a great ride and if the damn numbers worked out of this cockamanie artificially restricted deal I probably would’ve rode home on one.

DISCUSSION (2)

Mattbob > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
04/11/2016 at 13:48

Manny05x > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
04/11/2016 at 15:12

Love the silver. Get an fz 07 I love it and I am a new rider.