There's no question here, just a few personal observations some of you might find interesting.
Yesterday I rode my 4th MC ever, and it was the 1st time I've been on a cruiser. Last summer, my buddy decided at age 58 to take the Rider's Edge course and learn to ride. I could go on at length about *his* experiences, but briefly, it took him several months rather than one weekend...he had a lot of trouble learning to shift, but he did finally pass his skills course and last month bought a Honda Shadow Sabre 1100. So it was his bike that I got to ride yesterday.
Prior to that, I had ridden the Honda Rebel that we has in the MSF course, and then I bought the Bandit 1200S and *really* learned to ride on that, and have ridden my buddy's Kawasaki ZRX 1100 a few times. (It seems that motorcycles are like underwear...guys just don't really want to share them too often, or for very long.) The ZRX is a lot like riding the Bandit...everything was in the same place (ignition key, footpegs, position of my butt and privates), and it has the same sort of start-acceleration-stop.
The Shadow is entirely different. First of all, I would get it moving, and then pick my feet up and then I couldn't find the footpegs! So I had to look where they were, which means not looking at the road, which is not good. Also, while the Bandit has a lot more zip from a dead stop, I'm also comfortable making it barely move, like when I'm in stop-and-go traffic. On the Shadow, once I got it going, I had a hard time keeping it under 10MPH or it wanted to die on me. That may be more a matter of learning that bike's friction zone rather than a problem with the bike as a whole. But it has a nice tight turning radius, and sitting further back with my shoulders in a different position wasn't as much of a transition as I expected. As for where they put the ignition key...WTF is the point of that?
I was rather pleased that I have learned enough in the past few years to actually pass on some skills. I noticed my buddy does well once he's moving and is learning on turns, etc. but he paddlewalks when he comes to a stop, and he needs to be more assertive with the throttle when starting from a stop. I also followed him when shifting and immediately realized he was going into 2nd gear as soon as the wheels started rolling, so I took his bike for a few test starts and advised him to wait until about 25MPH to shift into second. He gave it a try and said it was much smoother (because it wasn't trying to stall out!).
So it was great, I got to try a totally different bike, pass on a little knowledge, and soon we'll have another riding buddy! I keep thinking I want to rent a H-D when I travel for work, but I see more clearly that selecting a model would be important since the riding posture and the lack of acceleration are more different that I expected.
Topic: First Time On a Cruiser (Read 2586 times)