First off, way to go on the interest in bikes. I am pretty new on this board and I can barely keep I-club straight with Nasioc, so I obviously lack a bit of street-cred here, but on this subject I at least feel qualified to be potentially helpful. Well, I don’t want to go too far, but I was in the same situation a while back. I was a WRX owner first, then got a bike and the bike just sucked all the attention away from my Subie for a solid half a year+. I swear, to this day I can hear my wagon roll over and bump the Hawk in the parking garage out of jealousy.

The MSF course has been mentioned, TAKE it, really. You call 1800-CC-Rider a super old school media blitz (the classroom videos are even better). But don’t think of it as optional. In terms of your life on a motorcycle in…where are you? SoCal? Yeah, me too, ok this is the most cost effective 250 bucks you will ever invest in your limbs, spine, brain and yeah your life. It also makes it so you don’t have to do the monkey dance at the DMV on you bike to get you class M1 license (and when you get it, they send it to you in the mail with a note that says destroy your old license or else, can you say backup ID? Sure you are a commie-terrorist-thug if you don’t but some of us are scatterbrained noobs whose loose stuff)... You just go in and take the written test. Really the best thing is that you get to go ride dinky bikes in a parking lot and hang out with other new riders and the instructors yell out you but they are actually cool and its high stress but when you get out on the 110 at rush hour you feel like you might have a slight chance of making it through downtown without becoming a hood ornament on a new H2 or a an primer grey 89 Accord with Wire-spoke Daytons(SP?). Oh and you might say to yourself well I’m never gonna ride there. But the bug will get you. You’ll hit the canyons and get more and more confident and the first time you slide your bike into a parking spot that is not actually a parking spot, oh man then it’s trouble.

You might want to wait to buy your bike until you take the course, this is a great chance to talk to the instructors and fellow riders about bikes. I was all set to buy that exact bike, the GS500. I am a guy, 155 lbs, don’t want to die on a bike, and don’t trust myself on a real sport bike yet and so on. But when I went to look at one and I actually got to test ride (which I could to since I had done the course and the owner was cool) I was totally unimpressed. And you don’t want to be wowed by a first bike, as all the “old” a.k.a. smart bikers will tell you but you do want to like it. So eventually I stumbled across the Honda hawk. Similar to a GS, but a V-Twin, single-sided swingarm before Ducati. better handling an a crazy bunch of die hard fans who have helped me through this strange period of being a new rider who is not a cruiser and not riding the latest thigh managed gasoline powered rubber vulcanizing machinery. Now I am not knocking the GS, it’s a great bike and it is a grand cheaper then the hawk used, I think. But a lot of the people who own hawks never sell them they just mod ‘em. Oh man, I sound like one of the evangelists on the lists I’m sorry. Anyhow, check out www.hawkgt.com if you are interested they are cool bikes and great people, I am doing my first track day this Friday (with an unfaired, underpowered late-80’s bike). I didn’t mean for this to get so long. Riding has also brought me back to my Rex though, because it is so fun to feel safe and have the security of being able to slide through a turn or do something a little bit silly and not feel that your spine is on the line (even though it could still be).

Best of luck to you and let me know if you want to discuss beginning to ride as I am still very much a newbie.
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cripes I did write a lot. Gotta watch the booze and insomnia.
good luck.