another newbie ( bike vs. semi truck)

first off i'll say i'm 24, i drive a tractor trailer in the oil fields for a living. i must say you guys may not realize the simalarities (spelling?) between bikes and an 80,000lb truck. Looking ahead, setting up for turns and not "late breaking" for turns. Hell, everytime i come up to an innersection with a car at a stop sign i think "is this gonna be the idiot that pulls out in front of me." also keeping a distance from the car in front of you incase they decide to slam on the breaks to make a right without thier turn signal. And most importantly,  don't get cocky, cuz it will bite you in the ass and make you look like an idiot.  Although i never went to a driving school, but learned from guys with lots of experince, and living in a small town with no school for bikes, i'm hoping to do the same with bikes; finding an expericed rider to show me and help me understand without kiling myself.
      new to sport bikes and living in a small town i'm not having much luck finding a used smaller bike. there are plenty of bigger bikes for sale (r6, early 90's ninja 750, r1, sv1000.) any advice to help me avoid buying a brand new one would be appricated. (nearest dealer is 70miles away.) altho i have experice on 250cc and 450cc dirt bikes, i do realize that dos'nt mean *** when it coems to street bikes.
      i do have one question. in my semi truck and backing up, you turn the stearing wheel right (clockwise) to make the trailer go left. sometime in my pickup i'll back up and just turn the stearing wheel the wrong way cuz my brain forgot theres no trailer there. YOU GUYS EVER TURN THE STEARING WHEEL THE WRONG WAY AFTER SO MUCH COUNTER STEARING ON A BIKE ?  

What’s up, I’m a new rider myself been riding for a couple of months now, I did take the MSF basic rider course but by the time I got in I already had 300 miles of seat time. I did enjoy the course and definitely recommend it but all the concepts and techniques they covered I was already familiar with thanks to this site, if you haven’t checked out the rider skills series you need to no doubt  about it, there’s a ton of info.
As far as bike choices go I don’t think bikes from the 90’s are anywhere near the modern sportbikes as far as performance, so I don’t see those being a real problem for a first bike. I started on an 02 R6 with no riding experience (except bicycles of course) and while the bike is extremely fast in my opinion its easily manageable if you keep the rpm’s lower and take the time to learn throttle control(I can hit 60 mph in 1st gear but I don’t have to) before I rode at all I spent some time playing with the clutch getting to know the friction zone and rolling the throttle on and off with smooth and precise control. But the biggest reason it’s a bad starter bike in my opinion is the fact that its hard to control yourself its hard not to twist that throttle and glance down and see the tach sweep past 10,11,12… I have to constantly remind myself not to ride beyond my abilities. So riding a modern 600 sportbike is possible however not advisable, but definitely stay away from the literbikes!!
My two cents: while your searching for a ride be soaking up as much info as possible, definitely read and reread the riding skills articles I consider them invaluable and to be probably one of the biggest reasons my bike still has all the paint on it. Also when you start riding stay on some back roads with no real traffic for awhile there’s enough to think about just riding without the adding in traffic and intersections ( I think statistically others than curves, intersections  are next in line as far as hazards go).
The biggest things I’m still working  is reminding myself to look through the turns it sounds simple enough but you can’t just look where your going you have to look where you want to be, believe it or not the bike will go where your looking! And getting to close to the center line in left handers had a couple close calls where I was right on the yellow lines (my body not the tires) and cars coming crossing the yellow into my lane ( I think the car would win a head-butting contest).
And as far as countersteering a car goes I don’t think there’s enough of a correlation for your mind to confuse. When you countersteer you simply push on the bars these are subtle movements and nothing like steering a vehicle, I have on occasion went to press the clutch pedal will driving an automatic and since the brake is wider on an automatic catch the brake pedal and shoved myself into the steering wheel.

Welcome to the world of motorcycling hope your ready for the addiction!!  

Great post 0069, lots of good info in there.  And addiction is right, the weather has been gorgeous here lately and my car has not moved - I've been on the bike everywhere I go.