Hi,
I'm new in this neck of the woods,
Landed in California August last year and ended up sticking around.
One of the familys who has been kind enough to welcome me in to America and California have a history with motorbikes, something that I was not too familiar with. They run a farm and the kids have little xr's they tool around on and the dad has a buell Ulysses.
I come from a mountain biking background. Having a small light thing under you you can flick around and jump off hills with and fall off cliffs with and still survive?? Downhill/ free ride mountain biking - that was my thing. My Neighbour up the street was hella into downhill, had an older brother who was into it who has a super nice downhill bike, plus a cousin who was 7th in New Zealand in downhill for several years. Plus our houses backed into a huge forest hill so we'd always be building trails or doing the 10km ride out to our local international competition level locally built downhill track to tool around and have fun on. I never hit the 65ft jumps but all the chutes and snake lines was my jam. We learned how to fix most of our own **** on our bikes - plus my dad cycled around the world on a push bike - an old rally 20 - and he really got to me on the whole no matter where you are in the world your bike could break down and if you don't fix it and get out of where you are you could be pretty worse for wear thing, so wrenching on bikes feels like a spiritual necessity of sorts to me.
Life distracted me a bit but after landing in Cali and settling in, one of my investment partners came home with an aprilia sxv 550. The most experienced rider in the group went on and on about how rare and nuts the bike was - revered - chaos power etc. I hopped on it and went up and down a dirt road for 5 mins. Instant love. I got super geeky on it and found out about the whole supermoto scene and the bikes. - how much maintenance - one thing led to another - are there any for sale? What other kind of bikes like that are out there? What's the best? And that question led me to find the Swedish magazine article where an fs650e completely smokes an sxv in almost every category. Ever since I've been on the look out for a bike like that.
The kids in he family got yz85's and got into the ama hairscramble racing circuit -I went out with the family and watched all the races and helped work on their bikes and the whole vibe was just awesome. Riders of all possible social distinctions were there having a blast. My friend came first in his class on a 2013 ktm 500 exc with a flat front tyre and beat the guy in second by around 4minutes! The family now has a motorcycle repair man cave and are supportive of me fixing stuff there. So ever since I've been fooling with the idea of getting a bike.
I've test ridden
2007sxv 550 - pure joy
2004 crf450r - cool power but way too soggy suspension, too tall, sounds gross and low gearing is rubbish for technical slow dirt work
2013 ktm 500exc - very cool but $9000 - $12000!!! Too much for me right now.
2 strokes bother my eardrums.
So I'm in the berg and aprilia camp. The dream is to have bikes which can be supermotos or enduros or mx bikes which are the wildest chaos power bikes going. Fe & fs 650's. I don't care if I only use 1/3rd of the throttle, I am keen to grow with them. Plus there is always custom sprockets etc.
Thanks all, great to be a part of this. It's midnight I'm tired and I might just be buying a 01 fe650 tomorrow that was owned by a member of this forum in one part of its life. Peace
I'm new in this neck of the woods,
Landed in California August last year and ended up sticking around.
One of the familys who has been kind enough to welcome me in to America and California have a history with motorbikes, something that I was not too familiar with. They run a farm and the kids have little xr's they tool around on and the dad has a buell Ulysses.
I come from a mountain biking background. Having a small light thing under you you can flick around and jump off hills with and fall off cliffs with and still survive?? Downhill/ free ride mountain biking - that was my thing. My Neighbour up the street was hella into downhill, had an older brother who was into it who has a super nice downhill bike, plus a cousin who was 7th in New Zealand in downhill for several years. Plus our houses backed into a huge forest hill so we'd always be building trails or doing the 10km ride out to our local international competition level locally built downhill track to tool around and have fun on. I never hit the 65ft jumps but all the chutes and snake lines was my jam. We learned how to fix most of our own **** on our bikes - plus my dad cycled around the world on a push bike - an old rally 20 - and he really got to me on the whole no matter where you are in the world your bike could break down and if you don't fix it and get out of where you are you could be pretty worse for wear thing, so wrenching on bikes feels like a spiritual necessity of sorts to me.
Life distracted me a bit but after landing in Cali and settling in, one of my investment partners came home with an aprilia sxv 550. The most experienced rider in the group went on and on about how rare and nuts the bike was - revered - chaos power etc. I hopped on it and went up and down a dirt road for 5 mins. Instant love. I got super geeky on it and found out about the whole supermoto scene and the bikes. - how much maintenance - one thing led to another - are there any for sale? What other kind of bikes like that are out there? What's the best? And that question led me to find the Swedish magazine article where an fs650e completely smokes an sxv in almost every category. Ever since I've been on the look out for a bike like that.
The kids in he family got yz85's and got into the ama hairscramble racing circuit -I went out with the family and watched all the races and helped work on their bikes and the whole vibe was just awesome. Riders of all possible social distinctions were there having a blast. My friend came first in his class on a 2013 ktm 500 exc with a flat front tyre and beat the guy in second by around 4minutes! The family now has a motorcycle repair man cave and are supportive of me fixing stuff there. So ever since I've been fooling with the idea of getting a bike.
I've test ridden
2007sxv 550 - pure joy
2004 crf450r - cool power but way too soggy suspension, too tall, sounds gross and low gearing is rubbish for technical slow dirt work
2013 ktm 500exc - very cool but $9000 - $12000!!! Too much for me right now.
2 strokes bother my eardrums.
So I'm in the berg and aprilia camp. The dream is to have bikes which can be supermotos or enduros or mx bikes which are the wildest chaos power bikes going. Fe & fs 650's. I don't care if I only use 1/3rd of the throttle, I am keen to grow with them. Plus there is always custom sprockets etc.
Thanks all, great to be a part of this. It's midnight I'm tired and I might just be buying a 01 fe650 tomorrow that was owned by a member of this forum in one part of its life. Peace
