Thanks! Yeah, luckily we have a pretty good group of local guys I found out about who have pretty much all said to stay under 600cc, although one is recommending the Suzuki SV650 for my height/weight. One thing about living here is that there are only one or two good reputable shops. I was in the Honda dealership a while back and they were telling me the CBR600F4i is a good starter bike. Suzuki said the GSX-R600 would be okay. Most everyone else seems to disagree on both counts, particularly the Suzuki (the Honda is at least a more forgiving bike). Lots of people start that way and do alright, but I'd rather not. I've heard many bad stories since about the Honda shop and most of the others around here too. Definitely would want to work on it myself as much as possible and cut out the dealer service depts, as I've done with the VX. I don't think bikes should be too hard to work on. The SV650 is appealing for the riding position and lack of expensive fairings, but it's no joke and I'm not sure I'd go there first. I am leaning toward a Ninja at this point. The SV650 looks and performs better, but that's irrelevant at this point. Basically, there aren't but a couple of truly good learner bikes being made these days. They all want to go really fast and most are pretty sensitive to the throttle.
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