The Ninja is the sport bike... $3500
This Kawasaki Concourse was $2500 in the summer. With a pillion seat-back it would make a great long distance shared riding bike.
If I could pick up a good dual purpose bike for under $2000, I'd be able to fill out the stable for about $8000 (£5000). This KLR fits the bill, though I'd be longing to paint it (not a problem).
Unless I can find a way to throw legs over as many bikes as I can, I can't see another way to get an idea of how various bikes ride. Finding a bike that does everything is a fool's errand. Bikes that claim to do this are a series of compromises. The key to riding a variety of styles is to ride a variety of bikes.
The first bike that would suffer in a diversified garage would be the somewhat sensible all round Ninja. In its place I'd be looking for a naked streefighter... a Triumph Speed Triple would be on my short list.
Motorbike show NOTE: I had a chat with Riders Plus Insurance. They insured me in my first year of riding and were helpful and efficient. This time round I was curious about how insuring multiple bikes work. They told me that buying a second bike means you're doubling your insurance payments. This doesn't make a lot of sense to me as I can only ride one bike at a time. I expected something like you're insured at the rate of whatever the highest cost bike is plus 10% for the paperwork on the other bike. What I was told was that you get a 10% discount on your second bike and pay another full set of insurance on it... which makes owning multiple bikes not really financially viable, so that dream goes down the toilet.
