Having experience with the Rebel 250 and VLX, I’m going to offer some thoughts on those two.
Take a very good look at how comfortable you find yourself during the MSF course. Partially I mean physical comfort (is the bike they give you, most likely a 250cc cruiser, too small to sit comfortably on?)
But even more importantly, psychologically assess your comfort level with how you handle the low speed maneauvering, and how you react when you give it some beans. Do you ever find yourself short on reaction time, or thinking about al the things you have to do when you are supposed to be doign them?
Unless your 60 mile commute is on interstate (in which case, don’t plan on doing it for a while even if you get a bike that can do it) a 250 cruiser is almost certainly the better bike to start on. It is considerably less intimidating and much easier to handle at low speeds.
The VLX is a noticible step up from a 250 in every way. Bigger, heavier, and more power. It is geared really tall, so I wouldn’t worry about goosing the gas (it is pretty tame), but everything happens faster on it than a 250. When you are learning it is nice to have a buffer space. On the 250 you have time to think things through as they are happening. Not so much with the 600.
My mom had a Rebel 250 for just shy of a year. She loved it. She never dropped it, and it was powerful enough for riding in traffic and trips out of town on the freeway with light traffic. She moved up to a VLX, and in her second ride dumped the bike and ended up underneath it on a paved median. She was pulling out of the gas station, hit some gravel and the bike started to slide, she target fixated on the median and hit it. She’s certain if she’d been on the 250 she would have had enough time to correct and drive away with nothing more than a raised heartbeat.
The VLX is a good bike, no question. On our family rides we’ve run into many people who loved their VLXs, many having ridden across the US and Canada on their “little” 600s. But spending a year on a 250 and then moving up to a VLX really does seem like the better idea (having watched someone do it). With the resale values of 250s, if you buy a used one, you’ll probably sell it for what you paid – My mom sold hers for $100 less than she paid for hers, and it was a 1983!
Now, if you decide you want a standard instead of a cruiser, the Blast is simply an excellent bike to go with, period.
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“The two seconds between ‘Oh S**!’ and the crash isn’t a lot of practice time.”