Don't think I'm quite ready yet, but a 2008 Kawasaki KLR just popped up on Craigslist in my area. Price -- $1,500 -- is right, and from the photos it seems to be in pretty good shape.
The KLR is a bike that makes my "top 10 prospects" list. The only thing I really don't like about it is that it's liquid-cooled, but what ya gonna do -- it's a 652cc single-cylinder engine, which I suspect just can't have enough air moved around it to cool it that way.
What I do like about it is part of what makes the "liquid-cooled" part kind of strange: The US Marine Corps uses a "military edition" of the KLR (they run theirs on diesel or kerosene instead of regular gas, though).
Why would the Marine Corps choose it? The KLR is a rugged bike that's kind of caught between the dirt, "dual sport," and "adventure" categories ... and that can do about 90 miles per hour on the road. Some riders say that it vibrates just a little too much for comfort on really long road trips, but I suspect it's reliable on such trips. Having seen first hand the rigors the armed forces put motorcycles through, I'd expect it to just not break down much and to be pretty easy to maintain. I'd feel reasonably secure riding one of those on a long road trip.
Why wait on a KLR, other than that I'm waiting in general?
Because I expect to see a lot of them -- military surplus, which does mean diesel, but I can live with that -- on the surplus market in the fairly near future.
The Marine Corps -- specifically the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion -- is already fielding Zero MMX electric motorcycles, and I expect electric bikes to start taking over military cycle procurement in a big way.
No, not because the Pentagon is all woo-woo woke greenie weenie. Even if it is, that's not the relevant factor.
The most relevant factors are 1) noise and 2) heat signature. Electric bikes are quiet and not as visible to detection systems that look around for big infrared spots. Those are both important for recon, and helpful for other uses (e.g. messenger/courier cycling).
Another relevant factor is that if you drop a bunch of solar panels at a forward base to charge batteries, you don't have to make such drops over and over again like you do with big bladders full of diesel fuel. The force using those bikes can keep using those bikes indefinitely even if supply to their base gets sketchy.
When the military KLRs start going on the surplus market, I might buy one of those -- or take advantage of the lower prices for used civilian type KLRs that will probably result from the military surplus supply surge.
Or I might pick a different bike. I'm open to everything from 250cc (several models) to, say, 883cc (the Harley-Davidson Iron 883). I do prefer air-cooled, and will want something that rides comfortably at distance (none of those "lean all the way forward to ride" bikes), but value for price will probably be the main consideration, when I get there.
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