[Ride.]

The piece of "advice" that always bothered the crap out of me, has been mentioned several times in this thread, and millions of times on this board and other sportbike forums. It seems to usually be mentioned by new riders, like its an attempt to excuse themselves, and other noobs, for getting a bike that's out of their realm of control. That piece of "advice" is this:

"respect the bike and know your limits."
"the rider controls the throttle and makes it go fast, not the bike"

Hmm. Its one thing to respect the bike, but as a rider, you still need to input the motions into the bike in order to make it do anything. And how is a noob to know what level of "respect" certain bikes require? The bike is incapable of returning that respect. On top of that, once you learn to respect the throttle, the brakes will kick your ass, or the steering. The abilities of high performance sportbikes are just too far out of grasp of new riders.

Limits? How is a noob to know their limits? They're new!
And even if they eventually learned THEIR limits, the limits of a high performance sportbike is still way out of their control.

That leads me to the next statement, that the rider - not the bike, operates the throttle. First off, there's a lot more to riding than just operating the throttle. But when it comes to the rider controlling the throttle, that's the problem. A new rider HAS NO CONTROL of the throttle. At least not advanced control to keep the bike in their "comfort zone" or "within their limits". Its one thing to tell yourself that you're gonna respect the throttle and stay within your limits, and its another thing to be able to do it. Your "will power" to keep the bike within your control is not gonna make it happen. Its an acquired skill. The whole philosophy goes straight out the window anyway since its hard to ride these bikes slow, and easy to make them go fast (in a straight line). Trying to make these bikes go slow can put you on your ass just as easily as letting them go too fast.

Start with the right bike people! There's so many reasons why. And your future as a rider is depending on it.