Bob
2005-07-17T21:07-0700
Since I was going to be commuting to work everyday, we decided we were going to need another vehicle. Since we had been thinking about it for a couple years, we thought this would be a good time to go buy a motorcycle. We took the MSF course, got our licenses and started looking on Cycle Trader for a used 500cc. While 600cc bikes are much more common, a 500cc gets about 50% better gas mileage. Additionally, our new GS500 has around 37 horsepower(making it as "sporty" as a Jetta) while a 600cc usually has nearly 3 times that at 90-100HP.
After looking for a few months, we ran out of time and went out and bought a new 04 GS500F. With a massive 487cc engine, this is a "standard" bike with fairings (the pretty plastic parts on the front half). Its just about as simple of a machine as possible: air cooled, parallel twin engine with a chain-driven rear tire. This means I can do all of the servicing myself, making the bike really cheap to operate.
Oh, did I mention it gets 65 Miles to the gallon on surface streets?