I've had my 250 now for about a month, I've driven the ZX6, and OMG what a fun bike that was. Yes the power is impressive, my only real complaint on the 250 is the passing power on the freeway is lacking. That could potentially get you into trouble by not being able to get out of the way. However the power that you have with a 600cc+ street bike could get you into more trouble, with great power comes great responsiblity, with less power, you can be an irresponsible dork

 

My last bike was a 2001 ZRX1200R and I loved it, rode it for over 4 years, but it was to heavy. Before that I owned a Suzuki SV650S. Didn't like the V-twin much. I'm enjoying riding the 250R close to it's limits. I'll be keeping it for a long time, although I may get bigger displacement bike when I can afford to (meaning paying cash, no financing).

 

ive had mine for about 6 months. i plan on upgrading to a triumph daytona 675 or ducati 848 in a little over a year from now. right now I have fun riding the **** out of it and I enjoy being able to hang with the bigger bike through the tight twisties.

 

You can't learn to ride in 2 or 3 months. What you can do in that time is develop (over)confidence and start to think that you can really ride. That is not a good time to move up.

Stay with the 250 for a year and at least 10K miles. Ideally, the time to move up is when you realise that you can ride the 250 hard enough that you don't actually need to move up unless you do a lot of 2-up or highway miles.

Rob

 

......

 

Until it breaks and I can no longer find replacement parts for it. *thinks* Maybe I should purchase an extra engine, take it apart and store it someplace dry just in case? (and I've owned a 600cc in the past!)

 

I love people unloading 250's. They're making an opportunity for those of us without 250's...

 

agree with everything excpt the 10K miles (because the average daily commute to work is 10 miles and the round trip five times a week 52 weeks a year is ~5000 miles, thats more seat time than it takes to get a pilots liscense), but good enough for me.

 

About once a day I get asked at work if I'm gonna buy a bigger bike once I get used to the 250. I always say no cause it's a lot of fun since my ride to work and back involves Santa Susana Pass. I now ride it way more than my S2000 (poor thing now only gets driven once a week). I don't think I will ever get rid of mine, especially since I've waited for months and called dealers almost every day hoping they'd say they have a green one. I'm keeping this one for awhile

Funny that some new riders get too over-confident during the 250's break-in period thinking it's too slow that they trade up right away. I have enough passing power in the highway so I guess those who switch use the freeway a lot.

It's a shame Kawi didn't hold production on their bigger bikes and put more resources in making more 250s. Their profits would go up and possibly encourage them to build a ZX version or something..

I'd like to add a red Monster 696 I can ride once a week... Perfect seat height, looks badass, torquey, and sounds wicked. Maybe next year

 

I sort of appreciate that, but you can ( and need to ) do some riding that isn't commuting. I'm a low mileage rider these days - 8 or 9K a year, but went to Glasgow last week (480 mile round trip) and I'm down to London (400 mile round trip) tomorrow. Throw in a few weekend days riding twisties to develop your general riding skills as well and you can build up the mileage.

My personal definition of an experienced rider is at least 3 years and at least 30K miles, with the last 10K on a fairly big bike. With that mileage it's pretty certain that you've experienced every sort of condition and situation that you're ever likely to, and often enough to learn how to cope. Some riders, if their useage is sufficiently varied, can rack up equivalent experience quicker, but most don't, and I expect that experienced rider to have ridden several different types of bikes and ridden in a number of different locations.

Even with the pilots licence, getting the licence is the point at which you start to rack up meaningful experience. Both the pilot and (hopefully) the bike rider have a reasonable amount of skill before they start to gain experience. The two are different and ideally you will eventually have both.

Rob