After years of waffling on the sale of my 200 20v, I finally decided that I wanted a new motorcycle more than I loved the Audi.
Roughly 6 months up for sale and nearly 30 inquiries about the condition of the car, and she is gone. In the end, my walk around on youtube worked better than the for sale ads.
Despite the number of inquiries about the car, only 2 people actually came to test drive it. The person who bought the car ultimately decided he would buy it before he actually drove the car to confirm his decision. In seeing his excitement, I knew my decision to sell the car was the right one and that she was going to the right owner.
My wife and I always thought I would have a hard time parting with her but I've moved on with hardly a hitch in my step, though hardly a day goes by that I don't think about the 200.
In the last 3 years I've been toying with the idea of a motorcycle purchase. First I wanted a Kawasaki Versys and then my friend gave me his 1980 Honda CB750c to ride and restore. While it's a great motorcycle, I wanted fuel injection and liquid cooling for fuel efficiency and better emissions, but I also didn't want to worry about reliability on a longer trip.
The Kawasaki Z1000 and the similiar Ninja 1000 were nice but insurance costs as well as unusable top speed had me look elsewhere. Ultimately, I chose a Triumph Street Triple based on reviews, looks and the naked styling.
After my friends accident, I reasoned a faired bike would enable me to exceed 120mph with ease and I didn't think I wanted that capability so I figured a naked bike would ensure that I felt the wind for those few excursions well above the posted speed limit.
The sale of the 200 gave me some seed money to start looking for the new bike along with a 401k loan from work. My goal was to have this self centered purchase have close to zero financial impact on the family finances.
The Street triple is not an easy bike to find on the used bike market. In 2 months only 2 or 3 showed up on eBay. I used SearchTempest.com to search Craigslist for motorcycles for sale within a 300 mile radius and found 2 that I was ready to buy but the first seller (of a matte gray 2010) never responded and the 2nd seller (of a matte gray 2009) decided to backout. I was going to 'settle' for a white 2010 standard triple but that sold before I could get to the seller 2 states away.
Increasing my search radius a bit more, I found a White 2012 Street Triple R for just a few hundred more than the asking prices of the 2009 and 2010 I wanted. The only negative was the color was the same as one of my riding buddies. Had I purchased new I would have gravitated to white over black and red anyway (for visibility) so I made an offer and it was accepted.
I was starting to think about a 2012 model because the new headlights offered improved night time visibility. I reached out to the local Triumph dealer but already knew the OTD price would put me in the mid $11k range with flyscreen and belly pan accesories. I had a pretty good deal but it wasn't so good that I was afraid of it being a Craigslist scam.
Within the next week I arranged shipping with keyboardmotorcycleshipping.com and sent my check to the 3rd party payment transfer service with shippingmasters.com
Right now my bike is in transit to me while a snow storm is moving up the coast. Had I chosen to ride the bike home, my wife and I would have been faced with riding and driving home while trying to beat the storm, so the shipping cost was money well spent and a bullet dodged from the wife.
The seller was getting rid of his bike because of an old Honda cb650 that he just got back on the road and I was buying the bike because of my Honda cb750 that I had been riding for over 3 years.
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