I'm not as experienced as some on here, but I've been through the first year and have a totally different perspective on being a beginner than most riders. From my perspective, I think too much is made of being a beginner. I see a ride as a piece of transportation primarily; not a recreational vehicle, and just as with a car, I wouldn't go out and buy a smaller or slower car than what I needed in my life with the plan of eventually working my way up to something that I really needed or wanted. But with respect to a car, if I'm a new driver and I've chosen a big car or pickup, then it's going to take me longer to learn how to properly control and operate that bigger vehicle. Same with a bike, if I want a bigger bike, then I'm going to need more train up time. I'd rather do the training and easing in to situations than to buy something that I know I'm not going to keep.
To me this is like saying I'm going to go out and spend money on something that I don't really want, just so I can work my way up to something that I want later. I would rather spend a lot of extra time and money training and getting used to something that I really want than to buy something that I don't want. However, buying something used very cheaply, that is in your size range, does make sense and is something that I should have considered before buying a $5500 scooter. I dropped it once with no major damage, but it did cause some cosmetic damage that has hurt the trade value. If I have spent $1500 on a used scooter, it wouldn't have been such a loss. Also, even though I lucked out, and I did learn over the past year that riding was going to be everything I expected and more, it could have gone differently. I could have learned that riding wasn't for me, and in that case, I would have lost a lot of money buying new and then trying to sell it.
I don't subscribe to this graduated theory like most do. I didn't want to work my way up to something bigger. I wanted to start with the right size and stick with it, but, in my case, I'm not looking to eventually ride a big, heavy, or fast bike; only a bike that is suitable for my 55-mile-per-day highway commute. A lot of people want to eventually work their way up to a 600 lb plus bike, and I guess for these people, the graduated theory makes more sense; though still an expensive way to ride a bike. In your post, you stated that you wanted the CTX as a beginner bike. This was not my thinking at all on my first ride, so I'm assuming you want to work yourself up to something bigger and/or faster, and the graduated theory may work better for you. If this is the case, I would think that a new CTX is a very expensive first choice that will suffer severe depreciation in a very short time like all new bikes.
My first choice was a 330 cc scooter that weighs 395 lbs and a top speed of 86 mph and great acceleration (not exactly as small or slow scooter). My choice was almost perfect aside from the maintenance aspect of scooters that I had not researched, and, except for that one issue, it could have been the perfect choice for what I use it for even though most people stated that I should have started smaller and lighter.
I also don't subscribe to the idea that one needs to be able to ride a manual shift to ride a bike. There are plenty of automatic choices out there, however, most of them are scooters, and I don't believe that someone ever has to learn how to shift, even if he or she is going to be a life time rider, to be a good, skilled rider. To me, it's just the same as a car. You can learn through experience and through being a caring, attentive person to become a great driver without knowing a thing about shifting a manual car. I don't see how a scooter or MC is any different. You can become a great rider on an automatic, but if you ever decide you want to ride a shifting MC, then you'll have to do alot of training to be safe riding it as well, because then one has to get good at shifting while still being able to concentrate on all the other aspects of riding at the same time. You stated that you wanted to learn how to shift and you stated that the CTX was going to be your beginner bike. It just seems to me that it's an awful expensive choice if you plan on using it as a stepping stone to something else, but I guess cost is relative. If you're going to eventually ride a shifting bike, and a shifting bike is going to be your eventual ride, why not just learn to ride a shifting bike from the beginning. If you learn an automatic first, then you'll still have a long learning curve riding at the same skill level on a shifting bike. If you learn to do both at the same time, it's not going to be that much harder than learning to be good at riding an automatic bike.
