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Occasionally the local dealers will have demo days on certain brands and models (most recent ones around here were Triumph and Honda). Sign up for your local dealer’s email lists and you’ll be informed of them well ahead of time.

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…which is the bike it replaces.

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…and I actually couldn’t pick it up myself. The only person who stopped to help was a lady who had to be at least 65, and couldn’t have weighed more than 100lbs… But I didn’t have the choice — I had to keep riding because I was on the way to a doctor appointment. And I knew WHY I dropped it, and haven’t made that mistake again.

So learn from your mistake. It was a driveway drop, and pretty much everybody does it. It wasn’t a mistake out on the road. No one got hurt.

If it’ll help, take a mountain bike out and do some of those low-speed things on that before getting back out on the motorcycle. Try those tight turns and pay attention to when you need to put more pressure to the pedals (speed up a little) or weight the outside to keep the bike from tipping in. Those skills DO translate to the motorcycle, but instead of putting pressure on the pedals, you slip the clutch out a little more.

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Their solution to fill the void is to take the 650r and sleeve it down to 400cc… All the weight of the 650 but less power. Yeah, not for the US market, but still…

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Alas, they’re not available here…

Anyway, those bikes would be fine on backroads and such, but may be a bit challenged on highways. Size-wise, you’d have to sit on it to be sure.

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Not the jacket. You need a lot more impact protection.

I often wear Rigg’s Wear Ranger pants (cordura cargo pants, double-front, $33 at DenimExpress.com), and add a set of knee/shin guards underneath. Carhartt’s are cotton canvas, if memory serves me, which will be better than jeans, but not by a lot.

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And whenever some one would come to him with a request like that, his response was always “I’m in sales, not management.”

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Even if you HAD gone into the corner at the same speed as your riding buddies, and you had that pucker factor hit you, what would you have done (or been able to do) at that point?

You stayed within yourself and capabilites, rode your own ride, and you’re here to tell the tale. Awesome!

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I ride with bar-end mirrors, and have a great view.

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Search up an old article “Master Yoda’s Riding Position”.

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Both those Aprillia’s are automatics. I’m thinking that’s why he’s looking at those in particular. In any case, though, the weight of those bikes is going to be an issue on the learning curve. And from when I sat on them some time back, the seat height is pretty high (compared to my SV650s).

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Funny in parts, even.

But I question the usefullness of posting this in a beginners forum.

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Bikemaster makes about 100 or so different configurations of handlebars, and they run something like $20. Check Motorcycle Super Store.

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…before I got onto the highway. I’d just been enjoying riding on backroads. One morning (a Sunday, so not much traffic) I decided it was the day, and took a short ride (maybe 1 mile) on a divided highway, just an entrance to the next exit. I was scared, felt like I was going way too fast (though I was just going the speed limit and getting passed like I was standing still), and couldn’t wait to get to that exit.

But… that whole feeling went away the more I did it. Within a couple months, I was fine on the highway.

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“But you are not a point mass.”

And while that is correct, when you contact the bike with that mass at a single point (we’ll neglect the handlebars for now, because you’re not supposed to be weighting them in the first place), it’s affect on the bike is a point mass.

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