We are of course the best site here but you may also want to look at the one we don't mention (Don't let anyone know I told you about ADVrider) which has a greater proportion of low grade porn, internet warriorship and discussions about what flavour of Dunkin Doughnuts is best, but also some info that might be more local to you. If you go over there say hello from us elitist snobs as they affectionately call us

The just-do-it approach can work well if you are the sort of person who falls off, gets up, duct tapes the exhaust back on, takes pictures for a blog and gets on with it. I've seen 40 year old men cry at the realisation that their recovery service won't rescue their Bavarian Behemoth from North Africa though. I've also been hacked off by travel-light/just-do-it types scrounging stuff they could have brought for themselves if they'd had a plan. Our personalities vary. I worked up to bigger trips much more slowly, I'd been riding 8 years before I left Europe although I had done the old DDR pretty much straight off the training course (which of course triggers the bloke in the pub or your Auntie to start predicting death by foreign water, poor plumbing and repeats of various scenes from Midnight Express).

Totally agree with BofB, don't worry about the shopping. Sure, if you meet a travelling companion who works and plan a 90-day trip it may be worth getting matching bikes. You can read plenty of tales where people get a 125 for their wives and then moan she can't keep up with their 1200. The inability to ride slower or understand that your travelling companion can't handle the weight of a 1200 is the bigger step than swapping the bikes. Oddly these guys never try giving the wife the 1200 and seeing if they can keep up on the 125. No point buying stuff until you know it works for you. Buy petrol and tyres first.

Andy