Ping,
My questions are about bike prices. Why does everyone think bike prices are absolutely outrageous? Has no one ever heard of financing a bike?
For example, almost every year at the beginning of summer Suzuki has a 0 down 0% interest for 60 months on brand new bikes. If you take the $2,000-$5,000 you think a bike should cost or you would spend on a used bike, make a nice down payment even though you don’t have to, you would only pay between $65.81-$115.81 a month for 60 months with NO INTEREST! Even if you didn’t put a down payment on the bike, it would still only cost $149.15 a month for a brand new Suzuki. Personally, I think that’s an amazing deal, especially for a guy like me who doesn’t even put 10 hours on a bike every year. Which is the exact reason I bought a brand new Suzuki in 2015.
It’s not like these bikes won’t last 5 years, especially if you take care of it really well. I don’t understand why everyone thinks you need to buy a brand new bike every year! Buy a new bike every 5 years! Spend the $115.81 a month for 5 years, take care of the bike really well, then sell it at the end of the 5 years and use the cash as a down payment on your next bike. It is not that hard. So everyone PLEASE stop complaining about the price of bikes. It’s really not that bad. Just be smart about it.
Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
Andrew
Andrew,
I think some of the problem with this is perspective. If you look at motocross and compare it to any stick-and-ball sport, it is quite expensive. You can get some high tops and a ball for $150 and you’re off to the court for some pick-up games. If you compare it to racing trophy trucks or cars or street bikes, it’s pretty damn cheap. Even mountain biking, when you consider what you get for the price, seems crazy compared to a dirt bike. My mountain bike retails for exactly what you can buy a new 250F for! Still, the folks complaining likely grew up when bikes were a couple grand, or they are young kids who think the government should pay for a bike for them as some type of emotional therapy because Susie in history class texted back a vomiting emoji when he asked her to homecoming. Sorry, Skippy, but you need to suck it up and get a job if you want to buy a bike. And to the old guys who think the price is outrageous, well, gas used to be 50 cents per gallon too. It is what it is. I like your pragmatic approach to it, Andrew. If you figure you can enjoy a sport you love for $150 per month, well, that’s not too bad.
PING
Hi Ping,
With Dean Wilson and Josh Grant potentially doing their own thing for 2019 I was wondering how they choose what bike to ride. For example, Josh probably didn’t like getting replaced at Kawasaki. So would he then not want to ride a Kawi? Or maybe Dean would want to stay on the Husky since he’s most familiar with that brand? And how much would they weigh the possibility of a fill-in ride based on the existing factory riders’ propensity for injury?
Stan Bruzgulis
The Stump Grinder
Stan,
If you follow Dean on Instagram you’ll see that he’s been out riding all different brands of bikes trying to figure out what he likes. At the end of the day, these guys will ride whatever brand they can get the most help from. Sure, there may be a bike that better suits their style of riding, but if one brand is willing to help with parts or bikes or technical assistance, that will be the deciding factor. Maybe the Rockstar guys can kick some parts down or help Dean with a loaner race engine? If so, it makes sense for him to go that route. I don’t think Grant ended his relationship with Kawasaki on a bad note at all. It was simply a results issue and they needed to bring a Pro Circuit rider up, which is how that program is supposed to work. All the bikes are good platforms and you can turn any one of them into a good race bike, regardless of who won shootouts; those things are as useless as nipples on a man. As far as guessing which rider is going to get hurt, I guess you could play that game. But in this sport, nobody is safe. Russian roulette would probably be better odds than staying healthy for an entire season. From that standpoint, Josh and Dean have a good chance of filling in somewhere as long as they are ready to go.
PING
Ping,
I heard recently that you were suspended on Twitter. As a fellow conservative, I’m appalled by the notion that right-leaning political thought is reason to delete accounts. If this is indeed true I might just be done with that organization and their little blue bird.
B Mills
Mills,
Yes, I’m officially kicked off of Twitter. I wish I didn’t care about politics at all but it seems to me that disengaging completely is an insult to the work and sacrifices our forefathers made to create this country. Knowing that politics has become clearly divided and emotionally charged for everybody, I tried to only share my political thoughts and views on the Twitter platform; if you didn’t want to hear it, it was easy to unfollow. My Instagram page (@davidpingree101) has zero political posts and I’ve tried to curtail the political questions on here as much as possible. However, being conservative on Twitter is almost as acceptable as eating a Wendy’s Baconator in a Mosque. Twitter’s crack team of hate speech warriors took some of my comments out of context and suspended me for violating their rules, whatever that means. This same thing has happened to several conservatives on Twitter and it’s a disturbing trend. I’ve actually realized how much time I wasted scrolling through that page and getting worked up over things that I can’t change. I’ll follow news and stay educated on issues so I can make good choices when it’s time to vote. But I’d rather spend my free time riding than arguing with some putty-head about why a man is or isn’t fit to serve on the supreme court when there is zero chance we’re going to change each other’s minds. See you on Instagram.
PING
Have a question for Ping? Hit him up at ping@racerxonline.com.
