J and I spent this weekend down in Southern California visiting friends (much love, as usual, to Samantha and Paul), but before we left I put Zoë up on Craigslist Seattle.  It's an odd feeling; I've never sold a vehicle before and never bought one before the Bandit, but I suspect it's beyond that.  Probably an artifact of giving my bike a name; Zoë feels somehow like a partner in the whole process of learning to be a rider, rather than just a vehicle.  I've never had an attachment to a car, of course; a car is an appliance to me.  I suppose I think of Zoë a bit the way I do a sailboat.  A boat isn't just a conveyance; boats have always had souls to the sailors who crew them, and names and personalities.  For this bike, at least, I tend to have a similar sort of feeling.

I wonder whether whatever I replace her with will get a name, or whether it will just be a vehicle?  Time will tell. 

Anyway.  Since I listed her, I've had two inquiries.  Both of them have seemed extremely interested but dropped out prior to seeing the bike; one was a long distance away, and so getting up to Seattle was challenging, and the other appears to have run afoul of a girlfriend who doesn't support the buying-a-bike plan.  So I suppose my intentions are to keep Zoë listed on Craigslist for another week or two, and maybe put her up on eBay or Cycletrader or the local classifieds as well.  Those all cost money, but greater circulation can't hurt.  I'd prefer to sell her private-party if I can, simply because there's generally a lot more cash to be made with a sale than with a trade-in.  If nothing moves in a couple of weeks, though, I will have to suck it up and go see what the dealers in the area are offering.

In terms of replacing her, my Next Bike Target at this point appears to be a Suzuki V-Strom 1000.  I can't say that bike speaks to me in exactly the way the sexier sportbikes out there do, but the Strom seems a good match for what I want to do with a bike, and there are a number of 'em available used in or around Seattle at the moment.  I will have to be financing some fraction of the purchase-price of the next bike; I've already handled that, and have the check in my hot little hands, but I don't intend to move on that until I've found Zoë a new owner.  I don't want to be sitting on two bikes, and if I can't swing a private-party sale for the Bandit, I don't want to burn my bridges for trade-in by having already bought another bike. 

With any luck, I'll be able to work something out in the relatively near future.  I'm supposed to ride down to central Oregon on the last weekend of this month to meet up with some relatives, and I'd really prefer to have a nice touring-worthy bike to break in on that trip.  We'll see...