Let's jump in today with the questions you should answer before buying your next bike. Because every year I see motorcyclists making the exact same mistakes. You convince yourself what exactly your next bike should be.
You've nailed down the perfect machine that's going to finally make you faster, cooler, happier, more attractive to men and women, especially men, and more emotionally stable. But then six months later, you list it on marketplace with the caption, "Great bike, just don't ride it as much as I thought. " The truth is that most riders don't buy the wrong bike because they lack information.
If anything, it's quite the opposite. They've read the spec sheets, watched every review, and absorbed all available knowledge from the Discord elders, but that's not enough. They end up buying the wrong bike because they skipped self-reflection.
They get jacked up on dopamine from watching highway roll race videos and then go straight to the dealership and sign on the dotted line. They let YouTube videos, product pages, and Instagram reels make the decisions that should come from their frontal lobe. So, let's ask the first and arguably most important question.
What kind of riding do I actually do? Now, this isn't about what you fantasize about doing, and it's not what your watch history implies, because there's a massive difference, a chasm, if you will, between who you are and who you cosplay as when shopping for your next bike. You tell yourself you're going to do track days, but you're just a filthy little street squid.
You tell yourself you're going to go adventure riding, but you live 200 miles away from the nearest forest trail. This is how we end up with people commuting on race replica sport bikes in the middle of summer. And then they show up to the office with their Now, a lot of motorcycle riders are addicted to the numbers.
What's the peak horsepower? What's the top speed? What is the bare minimum that I can pay across a 96-month loan to get this S1000RR?
You guys got to remember oftent times numbers alone don't tell the full story. A BMW S1000RR is factually very fast and powerful, but it is also pretty boring yourself, am I buying a bike for me or for the internet? Everyone wants to fit in.
It's ingrained in human nature. We're social animals who must live and work collectively to survive a hostile world. So, it is hard to not consider how others will see you depending on the bike you ride.
But, it's worth remembering that motorcycleycling is inherently a solitary act. At the end of the day, it's you and the bike. So in today's digital landscape, you must not only resist the need to seek validation motorcycle, it's important to take a step back and take an honest look, not just at your skill level, but your tolerance for risk.
Because even if you have some good experience under your belt, riding certain bigger, more powerful, and more expensive motorcycles do present more inherent risk. Higher speeds, more power, torque, and more expensive cost of ownership. So even though you can ride a flagship sport bike or an ultra torquy Hyper Naked, you're shopping for your next bike, you got to figure out what your real budget is.
Not just the purchase price or the monthly payment you're willing to contend with, but your budget for everything. Because the cost of motorcycleycling kind of grows exponentially. The more expensive a bike is to buy, the more expensive it usually is to maintain and own.
Insurance rates can be pretty brutal for fully fared sport bikes due to their high frequency of crashes and theft alike. Seriously, comes to motorcycles. People want to talk about top speed and wheelies and crazy stunts and all that, but it's frankly one of the most important characteristics when choosing a bike.
So, you need to ask yourself, does this motorcycle actually fit me? Bad ergonomics will compromise your riding experience every single time you swing a leg over a bike. It will be the determining factor on whether you're riding your bike daily or letting it collect the dust in your garage.
If a bike doesn't fit your body, you're not going to want to ride it. It's not going to matter how fast it is, how good it the bike I buy encourage me to ride more? Because at the end of the day, nothing else matters.
If you want the hot, cramped, expensive Panagali V4 because it gets you excited about riding despite its limitations, that is okay. Go for it. If you're willing to take the long way home in the rain because your motorcycle makes you really happy, then nothing else really matters.
But more often than not, the motorcycles that encourage you to ride are the ones with the lower barriers to entry.
