I spent the latter half of this week in a sea of paperwork trying to get the loan and insurance sorted out. It was well worth it, because in a few hours BMW Motorcycles of Atlanta will be dropping the bike off at my house. The crew at BMWMA treated me very well, especially Jon Davis who is the General Manager. He spent some time this morning going over all the knick-knacks and don’t do’s with the bike. After getting the bike, I tried on some motorcycle pants, and ended up the Hein Gericke Cargo Overpants. I tried on different gloves, but the only one I liked was the BMW Airflow II, and they won’t have my size in stock until next week.
Earlier this week I decided to become an early adopter and ordered the the Hit Air MS “Hot and Humid” Airbag Jacket. I opted for the black version because the grey was hideous. The folks at BMWMA had seen the older design that someone from Japan had, but have not seen them recently. I’ll be sure to post a report the first time the CO2 cartridge goes off. 
The Loan
For the loan I went through Indiana University Credit Union, which previously handled my car loan. They took a while to get back to me, so I also investigated some other options in the mean time. This list below should show you just how much better the interest rates are at a credit union than a typical bank. At the time, the Prime Rate is 7.75%.
- Indiana University Credit Union: 5.75-9.0%
- BMW Motorcycles of Atlanta: 8.79-12.37%
- Capital One: 8.95+%
- E-Loan: 8.95+%
- Wachovia: 8.99-9.99%
My credit is good, so the loan was only at 6.25% APR.
Insurance
Since this is my first bike, I wanted to make sure I had really good insurance on me. So, I tripled the coverage for most everything. This is what I was shopping around for:
- Bodily Injury Liability: 100k Person, 300k incident
- Uninsured Bodily Injury Liability: 50k Person, 100k incident
- Property Damage: 50k incident
- Uninsured Property Damage: 25k incident
- Comprehensive: $250 deductible
- Collision: $250 deductible
I first checked with my current car insurance provider, Progressive. They quoted me at $896/yr, notwithstanding any special discounts. I checked with GEICO, and they only wanted $825/yr including discounts. State Farm refused to give me a quote since I did not have auto insurance with them. I didn’t mind this so much when I discovered that they were rated #1 in the Fighting Bad Insurance: Hall of Shame. Altogether though, the quotes were okay, but not great.
On the Dairyland (the Motorcycle division of Sentry Insurance). I tried their online quote form, but I never got a call back, so I decided to give them a phone call myself this morning. I was floored when they told me I would just have to pay $300/yr!. They gave me discounts for ABS brakes, passing the MSF, and being a member of BMW Motorcycle Owners of America. Truth be told, I just applied for membership to BMWMOA this morning because I knew they gave a discount.
With any luck, Jon Davis should be showing up at my house in a few hours with my new baby. I still need to pick up a decent helmet before I start trying to jump the creek in our back yard with the bike, however.
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