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New Rider, need advice on getting a bike to ride from west coast to east coast

Plenty of good advice has been posted about all of the positives that can be gained from this adventure.

Plenty of good advice has been posted about all the potential negatives that you may be faced with on this adventure you are planning to undertake.

Take in all of it with an open mind. Not easy to do when you have your mind set on something. I have been there before much like all these experienced folks before me have posted. Not just about motorcycles either but other life decisions as well. Some of those decisions turned out great and better than expected and others not so much.

What I am trying to say is hopefully you do take into consideration both points of view of people on here who are telling you to maybe wait a year and get more experience and the ones encouraging to execute your plan and don't look back. You sound like a very capable person and whatever you decide on doing, good luck.

One question I do have for you though and forgive me if you already mentioned it - is their a specific reason you want to get this done this year? Would the benefit out weigh the potential increased risk of less experience under your belt by completing this journey sooner rather later? Just curious.

One last thing, if your choice of bike gets narrowed down to an SV650S or an SV650, I would advise the more upright stance of the SV650.

Cheers!
 
If you go, when you stop for the day, make a habit of taking enough time to ride the whole business loop through whatever town you will be stopping at. Pick a hotel that is walking distance to a watering hole of some sort. Check in, drop your bags, and go get a quick drink/bite with your gear. (no helmet, but Jacket, Boots, etc.)

It sounds lame and poserish, but if your doing it coast to coast you're allowed to dress the part because you're the real deal. I say this because if you shower and change before going out you're just another schlep passing through town. When you walk into a place looking like a road weary traveler, conversations start much easier. There is still a bit of romance in being a biker.

I mean when a small town finds out some bikers are passing through things like this happen
 
I'll just leave this here.

With almost no experience of long distance travel and a learner license, intrepid motorcyclist Chris Stomp decided to embark on the journey of a lifetime in support of Riders for Health.
 

Not sure exactly what you are getting at with this. This guy clearly has plenty of riding experience. ‘I have ridden in Italy before and I could have just done another trip like that, but I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and push myself. I thought that Eastern Europe would be an adventure, and it was!’

It's not like he has never ridden before like the OP. :2cents
 
Also, definitely read Flaming Iguanas by Erika Lopez--a whacked-out novel about setting out on a coast-to-coast bike trip with zero clue and less experience. Awesome.

I've got 3 friends who set out on epic bike tours with insanely small amounts of experience and POS bikes--one when she was 18 years old. All are still with us, and all are wiser and have funnier stories for the experience.

I'd be happy to go on a coupla short rides with you, and give your bike a pre-trip safety inspection, let me know.
 
Not sure exactly what you are getting at with this. This guy clearly has plenty of riding experience. ‘I have ridden in Italy before and I could have just done another trip like that, but I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and push myself. I thought that Eastern Europe would be an adventure, and it was!’

It's not like he has never ridden before like the OP. :2cents

OP has some riding experience - on dirt. Rider in the article was still on a learner license, and hadn't ridden any long distance, so while he'd ridden in Italy, my guess is that:
  1. He didn't ride to get to and from there
  2. He probably rode a rented scooter

Instead, he took off to places like Albania where he wouldn't know anyone, would not know the customs or the roads, and in all likelihood couldn't speak the language. Compared to what the OP has in mind, those are substantial challenges.
 
OP has some riding experience - on dirt. Rider in the article was still on a learner license, and hadn't ridden any long distance, so while he'd ridden in Italy, my guess is that:
  1. He didn't ride to get to and from there
  2. He probably rode a rented scooter

Instead, he took off to places like Albania where he wouldn't know anyone, would not know the customs or the roads, and in all likelihood couldn't speak the language. Compared to what the OP has in mind, those are substantial challenges.

It sounds to me that it was a Euro learner license, but sounds like he has plenty of riding experience from where ever this Chris guy is from. I just don't like the idea, as others have pointed out before me, of filling the OP's head with visions of grandeur and expecting it to turn out like an awesome movie. This is a real life person in the real world we're talking about here. Just my opinion though. Dude hasn't replied in sometime so who knows what he's thinking.
 
Chris discovered the true importance of motorcycle maintenance during his trip. His chain broke, leaving him stranded on the side of the road in the dark in Albania.

Yeah, ride your motorcycle across the country, don't bother learning any basics, wtf could go wrong? Oh, that's right, a crapload of shit that's easily fixed by learning the basics of riding a motorcycle and understanding the difference between "minor problem" and "broken chain". If Chris had been less lucky, that chain would have destroyed his bike's crankcase, and probably led to an accident.

The consistent rejoinder in all of these stories about epic adventures is inevitably how some minor thing that could have been very easily addressed or wouldn't have been a problem with a bit more experience nearly lead to a crash or did lead to a crash.

Instead, he took off to places like Albania where he wouldn't know anyone, would not know the customs or the roads, and in all likelihood couldn't speak the language. Compared to what the OP has in mind, those are substantial challenges.

Just because one person did a stupider thing once and survived, doesn't make doing stupid things a good idea. Safe riders, and safe long term riders, get there by being reasonable about the risks. Just because some people get lucky and survive the high risk times while doing high risk things doesn't make it a good idea, and it's not like the OP is dying of cancer and this is his last year on the face of the planet.

Take trips, take copious long numbers of awesome trips all over the world. Just learn the basics of riding a motorcycle first, so you don't end up dead, paralyzed, or stuck on the side of the road waiting on the kindness of strangers to bail your idiot ass out of trouble you could have avoided.

Because the reality is I don't want to have to stop at your crash site, pick you up off the side of the road, bodge your fucking bike back together, and get you back on the road. I've done it enough times already, have some pride and some common sense and get yourself through the trip.
 
Not sure exactly what you are getting at with this. This guy clearly has plenty of riding experience. ‘I have ridden in Italy before and I could have just done another trip like that, but I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and push myself. I thought that Eastern Europe would be an adventure, and it was!’

It's not like he has never ridden before like the OP. :2cents

No one is telling OP to visit the bike shop with packed saddlebags and wobble out to I-80. But "one year of local riding" is a pointless barrier.
 
I've got 3 friends who set out on epic bike tours with insanely small amounts of experience and POS bikes--one when she was 18 years old. All are still with us, and all are wiser and have funnier stories for the experience.

It's possible? Even PROBABLE?!?! You don't say! I never would have imagined based on some of the drama I've seen posted in this thread! :laughing

Flaming Iguanas...I can't wait to read it. Thanks!
 
It's possible? Even PROBABLE?!?! You don't say! I never would have imagined based on some of the drama I've seen posted in this thread! :laughing

Flaming Iguanas...I can't wait to read it. Thanks!


Yep this^^^^^

I have a sister, now in her late 50's who travelled all over the US and Canada on her motorcycles a teen. Her biggest challenge came when she was busted for skinny dipping.:laughing


Oh, yes, she did not die :wow
 
Yup. I just thought of a fourth example: one of the folks who helped rescue Terma Gant and I when she wrecked in Baja is an extremely eccentric Czech lady in her 50s. She, with almost no riding experience, rode a crappy 80s UJM all over the length of the Baja Peninsula 30 years ago. She also spoke no Spanish at the beginning of the trip. She had a great time, if at times a challenging one, and she still visits Baja every year since.

Me, I am a bit of a slow learner. I got a Honda Nighthawk 750 and rode for a couple of months before making my own saddlebags from a side of leather and a Tandy kit. I put my stuff in trash bags and headed for Montana...I spent much of the time being uncertain, dodging storms, being scared while my bike did the hula on mud and gravel back roads, being lost, meeting awesome and not-so-awesome people, getting lost while alone in an ice cave, fleeing wildfires and swarms of yellowjackets, being chased by a moose, and being caught in an early-season snowstorm that nearly killed me.

I was immediately hooked on bike touring. :laughing
 
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Wow Nemo, you're a real idiot just like the OP. How dare you not go through MSF and 300miles in a parking lot on a Ninja 250! :wtf
How are you even still alive?
 
You can pickup a good used VFR for 3k for your trip and should be able to easily sell it for the same when you arrive. Make sure whatever bike you get does not have any vibes at speed. There is nothing worse (except monkey butt) than having numb hands/arms in the first hour of a 9 hour day.

Wet Wipes are your friend!!!!
 
Literally every "I started touring really early on" contains at least one, oftentimes multiple, "these things very nearly killed me but they didn't because I was lucky!".

What happens if you're not lucky? Oh right, you end up injured, paralyzed, or dead. Like Ozymandias. Seriously, everyone recommending people go out and tour as a new rider should read at least 5% of the words written by someone who was killed by doing just that. Just read 5% of the words he wrote about his experiences as a new rider,excited about the world, cut short by inexperience, leading to paralysis, and his eventual suicide as a result of that.
http://www.2arms1head.com/

Then think of those people's families, telling them their father, husband, son, whoever they may be, are now no longer with them because we as the experienced adults in the room, told them to go do something risky at the highest point of risk in their career.

You will find a distinct divide in the opinions on this between the people who have seen someone die in front of them, or watched an accident caused by inexperience pushed too far, too fast, and those who haven't.

Believe whatever you want to believe when it comes to yourself, that you're the exception, you're the ubermensch, you're just that good, whatever. But at absolute best it's ignorant to tell a new rider to go do their highest risk miles far from familiar roads, in new environments, at the mercy of the elements with no support and no experience to navigate those experiences.

And this isn't the old days, either, where a powerful bike made 40-50hp. The "widowmakers" of the previous years would hardly be compeition for an SV650, let alone a modern supersport. The fast bikes of yesteryear would be thoroughly trounced by the firebreathing beginner bike that is an SV650. So it's not really fair to compare the people who survived big trips riding slow bikes decades ago to those modern new riders.
 
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Are you an actor? You REALLY have a flair for the drama, the exaggeration, the excess...you should be on stage! :laughing
 
Literally every "I started touring really early on" contains at least one, oftentimes multiple, "these things very nearly killed me but they didn't because I was lucky!".

Okay Z3, okay! We get it! You think it's a bad idea! You can quit typing and go back to that basket of lemons now. :laughing
 
Are you an actor? You REALLY have a flair for the drama, the exaggeration, the excess...you should be on stage! :laughing

Okay Z3, okay! We get it! You think it's a bad idea! You can quit typing and go back to that basket of lemons now. :laughing

I'm glad you guys have been so fortunate as to never have to live with the outcome of a dead friend as a result of bad advice. But regardless, the following bit of text from that website is worth considering:

Another stubbornly persistent illusion is that when you look at me, you think you are seeing a whole person. First things first. Right now, once and for all and forever, shatter that illusion. I am two arms and a head, attached to two-thirds of a corpse. The only difference is that it’s a living, shitting, pissing, jerking, twitching corpse. To visualize this, wrap a towel around yourself the height of your nipples and look in a mirror. What is above the towel is what I am. What is below the line is the inert, onerously heavy, dead slab of waste-excreting meat I am fated to lug around forever. I sometimes look at people and draw that imaginary line in my mind. Do it yourself and look at how much is below it. What was once my beloved body is now a thing. I am a brutally, unthinkably mutilated human being. If you think people’s legs and genitals being ground off or smashed into paste approach the outer limits of what is gruesome, you have not pushed your imagination far enough to comprehend something far more horrific. If you think those types of things are worse than paraplegia, you are being fooled by the illusion.

This is among the most basic, absolute truths about my injury. There can be no argument or controversy about it. If you have some quarrel here we’re off to a very bad start and there is a good chance that you are a disabled person with an irretrievably distorted perception of reality. Two arms and a head. Period. Additionally, I will be using a sort of shorthand in this book when I refer to parts of “my” body. So when I say “my penis”, for instance, what I really mean is “the unfeeling, alien piece of flesh that used to be my penis, but is now just part of the living corpse I will push or drag around forever until I am dead.”

Because some words on the internet are literally nothing in terms of "baskets of lemons" compared to the reality of shoving, as Ozymandias detailed, a 12 inch tube up your urethra 6 times a day, every day, for the rest of your life, so you can pee.

The level of denial some people live in with regards to the simple realities of the dangers of motorcycling is staggering. Ride motorcycles, they're awesome, but understand what the fuck you're getting into when you do. I ride in spite of the dangers and risks, but I go into it with my eyes open, not some sort of childish denial about the risks, or some glib "when my time comes, it comes" bullshit. Our actions affect the outcomes.

Edit: Oh, and that's one of the more sedate sequences of writing on that page. Just so you know.
 
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