I read your post several times to make sure that I understood it as best as my reading comprehension will allow.  The race experience intrigued me. Post some race stories in the "race fans" thread for our enjoyment when you have a moment and the spirit moves you.

I suspect that your dirtbike&race experience will allow you to regain a lot of vehicle skill at a prodigious rate. However, becoming aclimated to the street environment, is surprisingly tough if you havent taken a basic street rider's course. You can get a head start on street strategies/mindset by reading a good book or two. The David Hough book found on this site is a good place to start. Take the street bike course no matter what,  You will meet bikers and find out where they gather on sunday mornings and other neat stuff besides course materials. Asking a bunch of questions about street riding here and on other forums of your choosing is a good idea. 

If it was me, I would buy the bike well before July (why waste months of good riding weather?) from a local dealer and make him/her happy. Naturally, if the bike is being bought from a private party, this scenario doesnt work. Thus any issues might be easier dealt with close to home. I would pick up the bike on a tuesday and spend several evenings putting about the neighborhood getting some skills shined up in a pleasant manner. Then head out on a longer ride over the weekend if I felt up to it. With any luck, the dealer would have the bike for its first 'break-in' service the next tuesday.

The following weekend, I would be long gone and wholely out of control. Yahoo. YMMV.

nobody rides half as well as they know how.

I wondered to myself what it might be that I could offer a returning rider that he might not already be aware of? What has changed in today's street scene/environment that a returning ride may not be really aware of? Sure, the returning ride has been doing the cage bit.  But being on the bike again makes traffic more hazzardous. The accurate perception of those hazzards is the first line of defense. The increased exposure to risk while on the bike requires a returning rider to increase all of the skills used while riding.

The biggest changes in the traffic milieu over the last 20 years in no particular order or severity of consequence might be:

-Video game mentality of some cagers. Enough cagers have been playing video gamers that they can not decern real road usage from the game. They tend to speed and weave through traffic feeling impervious to destruction and oblivious to all the traffic problems they cause. There are traffic studies that say that some speeders are good for the flow. This probably true. But the studies do not carefully explain such conditions. The cager that I am worried about overtakes me at a closing rate of +30mph and passes me in my lane while I am already 10mph over existing traffic and am trying to pick my way through the pack. The video gamer is driving too hard for conditions and may not see me for the rest of the cages until its too late.  20 years ago, I dont recall having to deal with this type of cager on a regular basis.

- 40 years ago, the worst cager was drunk or impaired in such a way that they appeared drunk. It was easy to minimize this risk once a biker got the hang of it.  Dont ride near bars at closing time. Be carefull passing anyplace that vends booze, yaday, yada. Once a drunk was spotted, it was easy to account for their antics. They stayed drunk and continued to drive like it.

But what if your drunk-like cager straightens up and drives fine for a bit before returning to drunken silliness?  Intermitant severe drunkenness? Behavior too bizarre to be anywhere near. And a biker might not see it happen until the biker was right next to the cage when an episode of cager idiocy occurs. In case you havent guessed by now, these are the antics of the cell phone user. They blow stop signs, If they check a blind spot befroe they change lanes, its not on the side with the cell phone. The cell phone makes an otherwise 'normal' cager erratic and inattentive to driving. It is no longer possible to ride a bike and count on a reliable traffic scenario.

The cell phone is ubiquitous. Its distraction to cagers is nearly enough to make me think about giving up riding in certain conditions. There is no way to solve this situation. Its like a flue epidemic. Bikers hope to survive it till the epidemic disappears.  Its going to take some sort of sea change in the culture to make driving and cell phone usage compatible. Popular culture already has phrases for the idiocy of driving while on the cell. My fav is "phone dead", a take-off on 'brain dead'.  The cell phone makes traffic completely unpredictable for a biker. If SPIDE is necessary to safe travel on the bike and a rider cant get past 'P' (PREDICT), then wrapping one's self in the crumple zoned, air bag festooned cage and joining the lemmings seems to be the last resort.

The cell phone is the worst thing to happen to driving since the electric starter.

-I invite forum members to list their fav modern day biker concerns that returning riders need to be particularly aware of.

nobody rides half as well as they know how.

I am a confessed gadget addict who is going to a ten step gadgetadone clinic. However, I don't use them while driving and never have. You can laugh, but this is not like Bill Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that Blackberry.   

I just think that our kids or the fact that you get home safely to your family is more important. I have never put make-up on while driving and if I had a situation in the back seat with the kids, I pulled over to work it out.

Today, people are in such a hurry and have GPS, cell phones, sattelite radios, car sound systems that rattle my teeth (and that is the car behind me), DVD players for the kids, cell phones, PDA's, Blackberries or Treo's..and I could go on, but you know what I am talking about.

People don't pay attention in general to many things, but when you give them a vehicle, you have to couple inattention with a machine capable of taking lives in a split second.

For instance, stamps are going up in May again. In our post office is a HUGE sign that explains the whole deal, yet in comes Barney Rubble in his Brooks Brother's suit carrying on two conversations on two different crack-berries, checking out the ladies butt in front of him and gets to the window and asks the clerk "when does the rate change on the stamps, how much will they be and does this mean my forever stamps are now no good?"

This same guy left the post office and got back in his BMW and almost backed into me in the parking lot!!!!  This is the kind of inattentiveness that hurts not only us, but everyone on the road. More so us because as motorcycle riders, we are, according to drivers who mow us down, not seen.

I think we are stuck..we have to make sure we get our rest and are on the top of our game when the time comes to ride..our eyes have to be constantly scanning for hazzards, both human, animal and man made. I don't see an end in the gadget epidemic anytime soon.

2008 Silverwing, aka Sir Lancelot of Swoyersville.

I just ahppened to the MCN site for the first time in a long time, saw your post and just had to reply!

Some quick background on me to backup my advice.
I've been riding for over 26 years (started on minibikes before i could drive).  I had a few years during college when i stopped riding, but picked it up again not long after graduation and have been riding ever since.  Even with all that experience i didn't attempt my first major trip of greater than 1000 miles until about 8 years ago while living in Seattle (i decided to ride the entire southwest). 
I'm just finishing my recovery from a nasty accident back in August where i was riding on a 2-lane road in the woods at 11 pm and as i rounded a curve (i kid you not) i hit a tree that had fallen across the road as a result of a storm earlier in the day.  I ended up shattering my left shoulder blade, broken collarbone, ribs, mangled foot (bike fell on my foot) and road rash...  But it turns out i had some incredibly talented doctors who stitched me back together and i'm almost as good as new!

As part of my plan to get back into riding i'm planning a long cross-country trip with my father to the southwest (we live in the northeast) for this August.  However, even with my riding experience i'm going to be taking it REAL easy for the first few months i'm riding and gradually build myself up to get back into the swing of things before i even attempt the long trip.

My point is that even if you had tons of riding experience when you were younger, if it really has been 20 years since you've been on a bike, you have a lot of rust to scrape off in order to get back to where you were 20 yrs ago.

I'm not saying it would be foolish to do what you described but i think your risk factors for trouble are greatly increased because:

1) You'll be attempting a very long ride on an unfamiliar and powerful bike on roads you've never ridden before with traffic (my accident happened on a road i'd ridden many times before AND i was alert because i'd seen deer earlier in the evening).

2) The length of time since you were last on a bike means your riding reflexes are greatly diminished (or possibly need to be re-trained).

3) You're 20 yrs older so your body isn't going to respond the way it used to (unless you've been keeping yourself in really great shape).

If i were you i'd probably buy a somewhat smaller bike at a shop (or private used deal) closer to home and spend some time getting acclimated to riding again.  Taking a motorcycle safety course might not be a bad idea either - a lot of insurance companies give discounts if you pass one.

Another option is to buy a small really cheap bike, spend a few months getting your riding chops back, and THEN fly to the shop 1000 miles away and buy the bike you really want and ride it back!

Hope this helps with your decision!


--roadrash_cjj