If you could have any three production motorcycles, with any budget, what would you pick?
I’ll go first:
- Yamaha R1 (Sport riding and trackdays, also crossplane sound)
- Triumph Tiger 900 GT (touring and adventure riding with an actually manageable seat height)
- Honda Grom (for just hooning around for when I want a small light bike)
I only ever owned 600cc sport bikes. I started on a 1997 Honda CBR 600 F3, and put 17k miles on it the first year I owned it!! Started doing track days with it also. I did ride a number of same/larger cc ones just never owned (GSX-R 750, GSX-R 1000, Ducati 748R, various Honda 600s, Kawasaki 636)
Bought a brand new 2004 GSX-R 600, and laid it down before making my first payment on it. (Sigh). I hit some gravel while going around a corner that had been washed out of a driveway. Insurance totaled it, so I bought it back and turned it into a full track bike, and bought a 2005 GSX-R 600. I got my race license with Wera and raced the 2004 for a couple seasons. Super expensive, especially if you crash :). So after that ran it’s course I ended up trading my track bike with someone for a Honda CRF 450R dirt bike, and got into riding off-road. That bike was silly fast but it was not very good for riding in the woods. It was made for motocross not trails. Eventually I bought a new 2011 KTM 450 XCW which was a fantastic woods riding bike and sold the CRF.
I had the GSX-R and KTM for a while but had stopped riding regularly in the street, mostly just to work which was a bit of a pain on a sport bike. After a few years I sold the GSX-R.
That lasted for a year or so before I bought a 2006 Honda ST-1300 in 2013. Had 20k on it. I still have it and it has right at 50k on it now. I even got my “iron butt” with this bike. Road from NY, to Michigan, down to Indiana (1077 miles) in about 17h straight. Glad I did it, got all the official paperwork but would never do it again!!!
I sold my KTM just this year to a buddy I used to ride with for his son, so I’m back to just one bike (ST-1300).
That’s my riding history :)
And you would be surprised what you can get used to speed/power wise !