I know this is more of a winter type post where none of us have anything better to do, but riding season hasn't started for me yet due to technical reasons and/or laziness. I know I'm not the only one either. I'm bored, so...
I'm drawing on your collective knowledge of bikes, to see if anyone has made the bike I actually want. Probably the closest reasonable option is the 2013-14 Fazer 8, and the closest unlimited option is the new BMW R1200 RS. I want a bike that is both good at bopping around town, and good for riding across the country. I don't need built-in hard luggage - for the 5-10% of the time I actually need them, I have never found soft bags to be lacking. Also, it has to be some degree of cool, which is somewhat intangible and subjective (e.g. the R1200 RS, while it sounds like a great ride and has cool features, is not really a bike that I consider to be "cool"). I don't really care if it's heavy, as my person has somewhere around 80lbs of weight savings built-in, but it does have to have a rigid frame (floppy bikes are a no).
Feelings on bikes I've owned:
GS500 (current): I bought it because it was cheap. And it's definitely a functional, utilitarian, very simple to maintain motorcycle. But it's also cheap. Oddly it has maybe the worst brakes I've had on a bike, despite them both being disc, it corrodes in between blinks, it barely runs in the cold/rain (actually stranding me more than once), on the highway it has the stability of a tricycle rolling downhill... 30 min valve adjustments and the best factory seat I've ever sat on are the best selling points.
2012 Ninja 1000 (prev): Generally a really nice ride. Adjustable windscreen is nice, love the styling & finish, more power than I ever needed or wanted, nice big tank, nice dash. Brakes were not lacking in power, but are kinda... vague? Probably pads & steel lines would have fixed that. The clutch made so much noise it sounded like it was broken but it wasn't, the muffler muffled a little too well (obviously fixable), the stock seat was surprisingly horrendous, and at cruise a lot of vibes came through the bars. Also a little top heavy - never caused a real problem but I had nightmares about dropping it, and those nicely metallic painted fairings probably cost a fortune to replace. Factory tires were not confidence inspiring. No centre stand equipped or possible. Just about everything but the centre stand is fixable via aftermarket, of course. It was a good bike but I'm not sure if I'll buy another because... it sorta took the fun out of things? You had to go REALLY fast to get any drama out of it. You couldn't even pin it through one gear on an on-ramp without becoming a newspaper candidate for stunting. It completely straightened out any sweeper. I feel like Kawi just about perfected street handling on that bike, and it turns out I don't want that. (Also it uses premium gas, which is silly)
ZX-11D (prev prev): I liked just about everything about this bike. The only real problem with it is that they are all officially old now, and it's a pain to work on because everything only comes out one way, and I hate working on motorcycles. To get at the rear shock, you are seriously just about taking the bike down to the motor and the frame. I guess one possible solution is to wait for a well-sorted ZX-11 to come by, then buy it and not **** around with it. No wait, there's another problem - insurance considers it to be either a 1100cc or 1052cc displacement supersport, depending on how fine grained their math is. It offends my sensibilities to be paying that much to ride around something that is not in the same galaxy as, say, a S1000RR.
I'm drawing on your collective knowledge of bikes, to see if anyone has made the bike I actually want. Probably the closest reasonable option is the 2013-14 Fazer 8, and the closest unlimited option is the new BMW R1200 RS. I want a bike that is both good at bopping around town, and good for riding across the country. I don't need built-in hard luggage - for the 5-10% of the time I actually need them, I have never found soft bags to be lacking. Also, it has to be some degree of cool, which is somewhat intangible and subjective (e.g. the R1200 RS, while it sounds like a great ride and has cool features, is not really a bike that I consider to be "cool"). I don't really care if it's heavy, as my person has somewhere around 80lbs of weight savings built-in, but it does have to have a rigid frame (floppy bikes are a no).
Feelings on bikes I've owned:
GS500 (current): I bought it because it was cheap. And it's definitely a functional, utilitarian, very simple to maintain motorcycle. But it's also cheap. Oddly it has maybe the worst brakes I've had on a bike, despite them both being disc, it corrodes in between blinks, it barely runs in the cold/rain (actually stranding me more than once), on the highway it has the stability of a tricycle rolling downhill... 30 min valve adjustments and the best factory seat I've ever sat on are the best selling points.
2012 Ninja 1000 (prev): Generally a really nice ride. Adjustable windscreen is nice, love the styling & finish, more power than I ever needed or wanted, nice big tank, nice dash. Brakes were not lacking in power, but are kinda... vague? Probably pads & steel lines would have fixed that. The clutch made so much noise it sounded like it was broken but it wasn't, the muffler muffled a little too well (obviously fixable), the stock seat was surprisingly horrendous, and at cruise a lot of vibes came through the bars. Also a little top heavy - never caused a real problem but I had nightmares about dropping it, and those nicely metallic painted fairings probably cost a fortune to replace. Factory tires were not confidence inspiring. No centre stand equipped or possible. Just about everything but the centre stand is fixable via aftermarket, of course. It was a good bike but I'm not sure if I'll buy another because... it sorta took the fun out of things? You had to go REALLY fast to get any drama out of it. You couldn't even pin it through one gear on an on-ramp without becoming a newspaper candidate for stunting. It completely straightened out any sweeper. I feel like Kawi just about perfected street handling on that bike, and it turns out I don't want that. (Also it uses premium gas, which is silly)
ZX-11D (prev prev): I liked just about everything about this bike. The only real problem with it is that they are all officially old now, and it's a pain to work on because everything only comes out one way, and I hate working on motorcycles. To get at the rear shock, you are seriously just about taking the bike down to the motor and the frame. I guess one possible solution is to wait for a well-sorted ZX-11 to come by, then buy it and not **** around with it. No wait, there's another problem - insurance considers it to be either a 1100cc or 1052cc displacement supersport, depending on how fine grained their math is. It offends my sensibilities to be paying that much to ride around something that is not in the same galaxy as, say, a S1000RR.
lol 
