2003 Kawasaki Ninja 250

It was May of 2014, I was 21 years old and had just gone through a bad break up and needed something, anything to make me feel better. Growing up I never really wanted a motorcycle, they always kind of scared me, they always seemed big and were loud (funny how things change). But in the recent years I had grown fond of bikes and began to have an interest with them. I had about $1,500 in the bank saved away and that was all the money I had to my name. I was working part time and still lived at home. But this was something I had to experience.

I like to believe I was a humble person, I didn’t want the fastest or biggest bike. I wanted to learn and not be intimidated. Everywhere I looked people were recommended the Ninja 250. So I set off and searched craigslist for one. I finally found this 2003 Ninja 250 for sale for $1,800. I texted the seller and asked if they would consider taking $1,500 (among a bunch of other questions) and they said yes.

I still remember telling my parents I wanted a bike. My mom was surprisingly okay with it. My dad gave me the speech (the same speech I still hear on a daily basis) about how it’s dangerous, and blah blah blah. But he agreed to help me out, so we take the trailer to go look at the bike. I remember the first time seeing it. It looked bigger than I had imagined. My dad test rode it and said that he felt the bike was hesitating on acceleration. After going back and forth with the owner (who was a female by the way) he was able to bargain her down to $1,200. In fact her husband actually helped us because the whole time he was saying “oh just give the kid the bike” haha. They also gave me a helmet too which was great because I didn’t have one at the time.

So we got the bike home and I was eagerly trying to learn how to ride. I remember being in the back yard and my dad went inside the house. I kept popping the clutch and it died. I thought I knew what to do, but for some reason I wasn’t getting it (MSF is a good idea guys..) anyway, my dad saw me struggling and started yelling at me (he yells a lot) that I’m doing it wrong. He told me that I needed to let it out slowly and not just let go of the clutch. Well I stalled it a few more times but eventually I got it. I started doing circles around the house and eventually I got the courage to try shifting it into second gear. It was scary but It worked, I even got it into third gear before slowing back down. I was ready for the road.

-I should preface this by saying I did actually have my permit at this time, I got it before I got the bike.-

My dad followed me around the neighborhood riding behind me on his motorcycle while I was on mine. I still remember seeing a little bit of sand in the road and having a mini-panic attack, the internet trained me to fear even the slightest bit of debris. Because of that I went way around and it and he yelled at me about it afterwards asking what the hell I was doing. Sometimes being overly cautious can get you hurt. It was a good lesson learned that day.

After a few days of riding I started getting more and more confident and eventually started going on longer rides. I got the bike inspected and registered and was finally completely legal to ride it wherever. I also started ordering gear like my own helmet, jacket and gloves. Things seemed to be going well for the most part.

But there was a problem…

The Hesitation issue still persisted. My dad thought it would go away on its own but it never did. We finally took to the carbs and my dad started working on them. At the time I thought my dad knew what he was doing but apparently I was mistaken. We removed the carbs tons of times and never really got it running right. I still remember riding it around and sometimes the bike wouldn’t move at all, I would just have to coast. 

We eventually watched a youtube video on how to clean carbs and realized that we had to remove the jets and clean them, we did that and my dad went to take it on a test ride. He was getting frustrated with it and swearing a lot and as he accelerated off he gave it too much gas and crashed in the backyard with it. I drove him to the hospital and he ended up being okay. The bike had some cracks on it and I went ahead and got some vinyl to go over the cracks (a really janky fix to be honest haha) and I went to a local motorcycle store and bought some flush mount fake carbon fiber turn signals and stuck them on replacing the old broken ones. 

I had just received the title in the mail, it had been exactly 1 month of ownership and about 1,000 miles put on the bike. I then decided to sell it. I got a buyer that same night I listed it. The buyer came down and to my surprise it was a girl around my age. She was also a new rider and her boyfriend test rode the bike. Luckily cleaning the jets seemed to fix the issue and she handed me $1,500 and that’s the last time I saw that Ninja 250.

I still think about that bike from time to time. It was a cool little bike, faulted by a lack of maintenance and neglect. It showed me the dangers of riding first hand and although I never dropped or crashed it, it was a fantastic life lesson for me regardless.