gareth
Established
If you are going for your first proper bike, I'd advise staying clear of anything too sporty or too rapid.
Loads people seem to pass their test and buy sports 600's. Today’s 600 water cooled Jap bikes are rockets, and have quite radical front ends making them pretty twitchy.
Ideal first proper bikes are the CB500 or the ER5. Plenty of go, practicable, easy to look after and neutral handling. Once you ridden 6mnths or so on one of those, you are ready to within reason try anything you fancy. The other thing is the person who spends a bit of time on the CB500 and then say buys a sports 600 will quickly get to grips with it. While the chap who went straight from passing his test to the sporty 600 will still be trying to get to grips with the thing.
And my best three tips for beginners are;
1. Learn how to steer your bike. Amazingly they don't teach you this to pass your test, and it's probably not how you think you do. There is only one way to make a bike change direction and it's worth leaning.
2. Learn how to brake. Practise. Don't discover in an emergency that you ain't figured this out yet. What happens to beginners is they grab a handful, the forks dive, the front locks, they let go and then grab another handful. The bike now acts as a pogo stick with the front suspension bobbing up and down wildly. Though with modern BMW's you may not have this problem with their fancy telelever front end. Bull all the same you need to learn how to stop.
The trick is pull the lever in gently and right up to the point you can hear the tyre squealing if you need to stop real quick.
3. Learn to look ahead. New riders and if truth be told most of us on the road tend to look directly in front, not up front. You need to pay attention to what is happening ahead. The other point about this is target fixation. Where you look you will go (especially if you have sussed out 1.) At some point you will over cook it in a tight bend or roundabout, whatever. Don't look where you think you are going to go, as that's exactly where you will go. Look right out the other end of the corner and you will come out the other end of the corner. Your bike is usually much more capable than you are, mine certainly is!
Loads people seem to pass their test and buy sports 600's. Today’s 600 water cooled Jap bikes are rockets, and have quite radical front ends making them pretty twitchy.
Ideal first proper bikes are the CB500 or the ER5. Plenty of go, practicable, easy to look after and neutral handling. Once you ridden 6mnths or so on one of those, you are ready to within reason try anything you fancy. The other thing is the person who spends a bit of time on the CB500 and then say buys a sports 600 will quickly get to grips with it. While the chap who went straight from passing his test to the sporty 600 will still be trying to get to grips with the thing.
And my best three tips for beginners are;
1. Learn how to steer your bike. Amazingly they don't teach you this to pass your test, and it's probably not how you think you do. There is only one way to make a bike change direction and it's worth leaning.
2. Learn how to brake. Practise. Don't discover in an emergency that you ain't figured this out yet. What happens to beginners is they grab a handful, the forks dive, the front locks, they let go and then grab another handful. The bike now acts as a pogo stick with the front suspension bobbing up and down wildly. Though with modern BMW's you may not have this problem with their fancy telelever front end. Bull all the same you need to learn how to stop.
The trick is pull the lever in gently and right up to the point you can hear the tyre squealing if you need to stop real quick.
3. Learn to look ahead. New riders and if truth be told most of us on the road tend to look directly in front, not up front. You need to pay attention to what is happening ahead. The other point about this is target fixation. Where you look you will go (especially if you have sussed out 1.) At some point you will over cook it in a tight bend or roundabout, whatever. Don't look where you think you are going to go, as that's exactly where you will go. Look right out the other end of the corner and you will come out the other end of the corner. Your bike is usually much more capable than you are, mine certainly is!
