Like NHBubba, I've been reading these boards for some time, but have only recently started to feel the urge to post, and with some specific questions coming up, got started.
El bandido de cerceta (03 b12s) is my first bike. When I was young, I was around bikes a lot, but later not at all. I always assumed I would eventually learn to ride, but it just hadn't happened...didn't know anyone who did, didn't have the disposable income for a toy, etc. A couple years ago, I was on a plane and the guy sitting next to me was younger than me, and a pilot for the airline, and we were watching some riders rip around in the dirt below our landing path, and he said he wanted to learn to ride but didn't know anyone to teach him and was sort of afraid (nice talk from a pilot!). I told him that there are schools for EVERYTHING, that there was no reason to put off doing something you wanted to do. Over the next few weeks, I realized I should be saying the same thing to myself.
I took the MSF course in April '03 and began bike shopping. I know there's an ongoing discussion here about what's an appropriate first bike. Originally, with some research, I thought I wanted something like the Honda Shadow ACE, which I thought was a totally beautiful bike. But I found cruisers to be uncomfortable. The Bandit was something that when I sat on it, it just felt right, and I like the look and posture of a standard. My buddy, who has a ZRX1100 (another big standard, we're a rare breed) kept urging me to get a litre-class bike, so I ended up researching and buying the B12.
Yeah, it was heavy and the center of gravity seemed too high and it was too fast and hard to learn on, and el bandido and I did a lot of damage to each other over the 1st 6 months or so. Broke a lot of levers/lights, tore up some farings, broke my thumb, etc. Still, after 10 weeks of cast and surgery (to set pins to make the thumb heal correctly) a week after I got the cast off, and before I started PT to regain hand strength, we went on my first "long distance" overnight trip, to Shiloh and environs.
Now I've been riding for 28 months, commute to work by bike almost every day (except not in the winter...too many layers of crap to take on/off) and have more and more off a blast every day.
That was a bit long, but I hope you find it interesting...maybe similar to something you lived through at some point.
