Buy a Motorcycle?

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On Buying Your First Motorcycle

My first vehicle was a bicycle. It was red, had balloon tires, a rear luggage rack and a gas tank with dual built in headlights - a very nice bike. I rode it back and forth to school, to town and where ever else I needed to go but what I really wanted was a mini-bike. Come Christmas what I found under the tree was a toy motor to mount on my bicycle.

The plastic housing held a battery powered electric motor and drum that made a tap tap tap to simulate the the sound of a motorcycle. It kind of looked like a motorcycle engine. I guess if you didn't think about it too much the tapping might sound a bit like one. What it was, however, was my first lesson in gracefully accepting a white elephant as a gift. As you might imagine, I took a lot of heat from the kids at school for that toy motor. Fortunately it didn't last very long and I was able to ditch it. I never did get the mini-bike I wanted.

By the time I was 14, I had my driver's license and had worked enough for the farmers in the area to earn a little cash. I was ready to buy my first real bike - an orange 250cc Yamaha Enduro. The man that sold it to me asked me if I knew how to ride. I told him "No, but I would learn". He gave me a two minute explanation on the controls, showed me how to kick start it and off I went. I spun out the rear wheel in the gravel of his front drive and nearly went down before going 10 feet. Over the next several months I would go down several times before I got the hang of it.

That first motorcycle came to mean something more to me than just transportation. It was my freedom. I suppose getting a first car is when a person really starts to feel independent, but this was different. On my bike I could go anywhere at any time and there were no expectations from anyone else - at least most of the time. On a bike you're normally alone. In a car many times you're carrying around your friends or family, but that's rare on a motorcycle. My first motorcycle taught me something about myself and what I learned had little to do with the open road, having the wind in your face or any of several things you may have heard about riding a motorcycle. I learned that I needed to be free.

I suppose choosing to ride a motorcycle is akin to the early explorers choosing to ride a horse rather than traveling in a wagon. You sacrifice some comfort, a lot in fact, but if something catches your eye you're free to turn and end up someplace entirely different than where you planned. You're free to explore because you're on your own. Just loosen the reins and you and your ride will find a new path. This isn't to say having someone along with you is a bad thing but the kind of person that travels with you can't just be a passenger. They, too, have to be an explorer. Don't expect, however, to have the person with you very often. Riding is mostly a loner sort of thing.

So you want to buy a motorcycle? OK, there are lots of great reasons to own a motorcycle. They get great gas mileage, can be an investment, you might look really cool in leather and you'll find instant friends where ever you go, just to name a few benefits - but that doesn't mean you want to ride. What a motorcycle can't give you is the disposition to want go it alone despite the chapped lips, freezing fingers, sunburn, and a host of other discomforts. Think about it.

But that's just one man's opinion.

Ride Safely.

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