Everyone remembers the first bike, and almost nobody remembers it accurately. Mine was an Apache RTR, and it taught me nearly everything by being just forgiving enough to survive my mistakes.
A first motorcycle has a job that has nothing to do with performance. It has to let you be bad at riding without punishing you for it. Too little power and you learn nothing; too much and you learn one thing, once, painfully. The Apache sat in the right place: quick enough that opening the throttle actually meant something, steady enough that a clumsy gear change or a late brake was a lesson rather than an incident.
I learned the clutch on it, badly at first, in the way where the bite point seems to move every time. I learned what a corner feels like when you have looked through it properly, and what it feels like when you have not. I learned that a motorcycle amplifies whatever you are already doing, including panic.
It was reliable, which mattered more than I understood at the time. A bike that starts every morning lets you build the hours, and hours are the only thing that turns a rider into a competent one.
Everything after this one was a refinement. This was the bike that made the rest possible.
