Quote: a buddy of mine is looking at the v-strom 650 as his first "real" bike
A fellow at work (also in DC coincidentally) just gave up his 1150GS that he got new and put 40k miles on for a 650 VStrom. He said the Beemers are bullet reliable if you do the scheduled maintenance (true of any machine) but the price of routine maintenance on beemers was a killer. He's a functionalist and went strictly for the useability. His VStrom has this huge 45l givi topcase that looks totally out of place, but it works. He says the 650 is just tons more fun than the beemer. I think I'd rather go for the DL1000 since most of my riding is highway. Man, there are a lot of great machines out there anymore!
