Some Tips for Choosing Your First Motorcycle

Choosing your first bike can be one of the most exciting things you can do. Here are a few suggestions from personal experience.

Take the MSF safety course before you get a bike. This course has saved me a lot of trouble, in a few cases a lot of pain, in my cruising experiences. This course will teach you the basics of safe riding, as well as some reaction techniques that you may need somewhere down the road. They also talk about rider comfort, AKA what clothes you should wear for safety. It's an excellent first step into the motorcycle world.

After you have taken the MSF safety course, decide what type of riding you will be doing. Do you want to just run around town, or do you occasionally want to hit the open highway? This will determine the type of bike that best fits you. A sport bike is great for running around town, but in my opinion is just plain uncomfortable to ride for long distances down the highway. A cruiser also does great in town, and will be much more comfortable for the long ride. If you want to basically live on your bike, a touring bike might be the best option for you. These bikes are heavy, and by heavy I mean HEAVY! I find them to be a little overkill for town, but their comfort and storage capacity can't be beat on the open highway. With that said, I don't recommend these for beginners, based on how heavy they are and how expensive they can be.

After you decide on the type of bike that best fits your needs, start looking around for one that fits your body type. I'm talking physical dimensions, not engine displacement. The only way you can find this out is to actually go out and physically sit on a few bikes. An uncomfortable bike is an unsafe bike.

Once you've found a bike that fits your physical dimensions, find one of that model that has a suitable engine displacement for a beginner. This is very important. A good beginner displacement varies from bike to bike. I don't know much about sport bikes, but the first one I ever rode extensively was a 600cc Ninja. Quite frankly I nearly killed myself on that thing because it was much more than I could handle. For a sport bike, 250cc is more than enough to start out with. That bike will still be able to zip around town like it's nobody's business.

As for a cruiser, I would say anything from the 500cc to the 800cc range is great for an average sized beginner. If you are a little on the smaller side, you will probably need to go smaller. I'm 6'2" and 200lbs, and my first bike (shown above) was a 750cc Honda Shadow Spirit, which I still have. I still love that bike. It's very light, handles well, has enough torque to handle me and a passenger, and above all gets GREAT gas mileage. It was also relatively cheap to start out with. Don't be intimidated by all these people who give you flak for even looking at a bike under 1000cc. It's not about engine size, it's about hitting the road on two wheels. My little 750 will keep up with just about anybody's bike up. The only time I can feel a difference in power is with a passenger on board. Even then the difference is very small. I'm glad I learned on a mid size cruiser, because it allowed me to learn how to control a bike in ways that I had not known. Some of these maneuvers probably would have caused me to crash with a bigger bike while I was trying to learn them. I can gladly say that I have not once tipped my big bike because I mastered my control skills on my smaller bike.

My last tip: Buy used for your first bike. I recommend this for two reasons: 1) It's much cheaper. Used bikes can be bought at bargain prices across the country. There is no need to go and drop big money on a new bike. 2) You're first car wasn't a Ferrari right? Unless you were privileged in high school, your first car was probably a beater. When you were learning to drive there was a high chance that the car would receive some kind of damage. The same principle applies to motorcycles. You're more prone to lay the bike over when you're first learning to ride. While the situation is bad in either case, I can promise you it will mentally hurt more to crash that brand new $20,000 Harley than it will to crash that 10 year old Honda you bought for $2500. Play it safe and start out with a used bike until you are confident in your handling skills.

Learning to ride a motorcycle is one of my most thrilling memories. But like all great things in life, caution should be exercised when starting. This guide is meant to help you with that decision, but it's not a step by step program that has no flaws. I would like to emphasize that your bike choice completely depends on YOUR skill level. I personally would underestimate my skills and stay safe rather than overestimate them and get hurt.

But on a lighter note, good luck with your search! I hope to see you out on the road sometime!