hey tango, I am an Ottawa ex-pat (now in California)…
I too had bad experiences with powersports, avoid like the plague…
I bought a new 08 250R (now trying to sell so I can upgrade to 650R)… however, I will have put around 2500 miles (4000km) on it by the time it sells. This was very valuable experience and will help me with the 650R. This is especially true with shifting as you are always changing gears (good practice downshifting)
the only reason I bought it new was because the 08 250 was waaayy better than the 07… also, I had an idea I would end up selling it after 6 months to a year and I (correctly) assumed that demand would still be really high for this bike.
Oh, and I have never dropped it (knock on wood). Dropping your first bike is not a forgone conclusion. The 07 650R is ~390 pounds wet whereas the 250R is closer to 350 I think… even if you are puny, I don’t think a 40 pound weight difference will change the likelihood of dropping the bike (because you aren’t actually lifting all 40 pounds, you only have to lift whatever amount of the center of gravity is not over the wheels, which is obviously angle dependent)
it might be worth making a sticky post somewhere that MSF/RideSafe/OCS courses usually have at least a 2 month wait… I think a lot of people are surprised by that… however, they are well worth the wait