Change is Good, Right ?
by Charlie Fisher
I guess the best way to start this is from the beginning. I have ridden and raced dirt bikes almost my entire life, for the past 17 years to be exact. I love motorcycles and everything about them. There is nothing quite like making your way out to the track in the fall and just running motos with your buddies all day. In my case I was forced in a way to take a break (I haven't decided if its permanent) from riding and racing dirt bikes due to some serous injuries in the past couple of years.
I was ok with my decision to stop with the dirt bikes for about three weeks. Then the itch was back. I was going crazy, I needed to ride something - anything. After talking with my wife I decided that instead of getting another dirt bike I would look into a street bike, after all I'd never ridden one of them before and they looked fun enough. So step one would be getting my license, since you don't need a motorcycle license to race dirt bikes I had never gotten one. This was easy enough and we moved onto the fun stuff.
I managed to convince just about everyone I knew to let me ride his or her bikes. Of course having a racing background and 17 years of experience I immediately wanted to get an R6 or GSXR, maybe even a big Ducati - with all the money not being spent on racing dirt bikes anymore why not? I quickly realized after riding a few "race replica" bikes that they were not for me. Yea they were fast and fun, but they were also very twitchy and the fun factor for me drops significantly when I don't feel like I have control of my bike. On the advice of a friend I rode his 2000 SV650S. I immediately fell in love. This bike had great power, not earth shattering, but more then enough for me to have fun. It was also light and seemed to fit perfectly. Bottom line, I had to have one.
Now that I had made up my mind to get an SV650S I would have to find one. I placed a call to my dealer, the same dealer who I've bought over twelve dirt bikes from in the last four years, and who has sponsored my dirt bike racing efforts. I was informed that October 2002 is not a very good time of year to search for a new 2002 SV650S. I was assured though that if on existed on the East Coast that I would soon be its owner. After about a month a received the call, Steve (my dealer) had found exactly what I had wanted - a 2002 Silver SV650S. After bracing for the price, since the bike needed to be located, I was pleasantly surprised to find that as usual they were going to help me out. Final out the door price, including search and recovery - $5239. Maybe not the best deal in the world but I was happy with it.
With the bike found and all the details negotiated the big day finally came. I collected everything I would be needing and set out for the dealer with my wife driving me to pick up my new bike. Arriving at the dealer they had it sitting right in the middle of the showroom under the bright lights - it looked amazing. I was given the run down of all the controls etc, and shown that they mechanics had only put three miles on it to make sure everything was tight and right. Steve pushed it out into the front of dealer and I thanked him again and I was on my way. It was 40Fo that night but I put on 135miles driving from place to place showing everyone my new toy.
Its now January and I've had the bike for a little over a month. I've only been able to do around 550 total miles because of the poor weather, but I have been tinkering with it a little. I must've been good this year because my wife bought me Suzuki OEM Lowers for Christmas. I had also added a 2 Wheel Junkie Undertray and a Renegade Single Low Mount Exhaust. Even though I have very little miles on the bike I think I can honestly say I made a great decision on the bike. Its also very fortunate for me that there are a ton of opportunities to tweak and modify this bike, as I love working on them almost as much as riding them. At this point I am just looking for people to ride with in the spring and summer.
All in all I think I made all the right choices with this move. The only choice I regret was giving up racing. Of course the more time I spend on this bike the more I'm thinking about getting back into racing. This machine has reminded me how much fun motorcycles can be, it has also made me realize though that I'm not talking about dirt bikes when I think racing now ... I think I may have to pick up another SV and try my hand road racing. For a while I thought taking a break (I refuse to say giving up) from dirt bikes was the worst decision I had ever made... turns out it was one of my best.