Advice for New Riders and Your Biggest Mistake

This morning we ran into a post on Reddit that an experienced rider (about ten years) wrote up for people who are new to riding or considering beginning. The advice is solid, suggesting a motorcycle safety course, practicing in a controlled environment (empty parking lot), and ensuring that your bike fits you (ie if you’re 5’2″ you probably shouldn’t buy a KTM Enduro bike). The poster also went on to discuss crotch rockets and how a race-tuned bike might be a bit much for a neophyte.

But he closes the post by saying “To end the whole thing, I’d just encourage anyone looking for the first time to test ride if you can, take your time picking, and don’t buy a 750 or an 883 if you can afford and want more. Because what will end up happening is you’ll get your experience pretty quickly, realize you can handle more, and end up taking a loss “upgrading” to something bigger.” Is this reasonable? If you can afford and want more, should you buy as much as you can when starting out just because you can modulate the throttle and clutch?

When I started riding, I learned on a tiny 50cc scooter and got used to moving in traffic, splitting lanes, etc. After that, anything with more than 10hp (pretty much everything) made it a breeze. But my biggest mistake was assuming that people would let me merge, with my 4.5hp. That nearly cost me my life as large Mercedes simply stayed parallel to me as my lane ended on the Pacific Coast Highway–I had to brake hard!

So is the above sound advice? Would you start on a Sportster, maybe something bigger or smaller? And what was your biggest mistake? Let us know below or in the forum, here.